The acquisition received the green light from the Czech Republic’s Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) on December 20, 2024, with the change of ownership effective as of January 1 2025, according to documents seen by Fastmarkets.
“We are convinced that this will strengthen the company and the Czech steel industry. The new industrial owner will bring stabilization to the company and, above all, development in the form of investments in production technologies, sharing foreign know-how and moving towards ecologically produced low-emissions steel,” Radek Strouhal, CEO of Vitkovice steel, said in a press release.
Located in Ostrava, Vitkovice is Czech Republic’s sole producer of heavy steel plate, with capacity to produce 800,000 tonnes per year of the material. The company has operated as a re-roller since end-2015, procuring slabs from third parties in Russia, Asia, and the European Union.
Semis supply
Vitkovice has been relying mainly on imports of Russia-origin slabs, sources said, but it plans to procure more semis from its new owner moving forward.
“We plan to get slabs from Jindal in the next years,” a spokesperson for Vitkovice told Fastmarkets, adding that the facility currently has other suppliers.
The new owner has no immediate plans to install a new electric-arc furnace (EAF) and resuming internal slab production, Fastmarkets understands.
Vítkovice is Jindal Group’s first European acquisition. The parties had been negotiating since the spring of 2024, Fastmarkets reported.
Jindal International Group plans to invest up to €150 million ($155.4 million) in the development of the Ostrava facility in the coming years, mainly in the expansion of its capacity and the production of products with higher added value.
Vitkovic’s previous ownership turmoil
Vitkovice was owned by Russian company Evraz Plc until 2014.
Evraz Plc sold its Evraz Vitkovice Steel AS subsidiary to a group of Cyprus-registered private investment companies for $89 million in 2014.
The ownership of the mill became uncertain after that. Several sources told Fastmarkets at the time that the Cypriot companies were affiliated with Russia, notably VEB bank, and probably also Evraz.
In May 2022, the Czech Republic’s Financial Analytical Office blocked the assets of Vitkovice Steel after having recognized that, behind the Cypriot funds owning Vitkovice Steel, there were Russian owners.
This, however, was denied by the company.
“The company is not owned by Russian entities, it is owned by five multinational investment funds based in Cyprus and owned by people from the countries of the former Soviet Union, but not from Russia,” the Vitkovice’s spokesperson told Fastmarkets at the time.
The suspected ownership link to Russia, which the company repeatedly denied, was not confirmed, which led Czech authorities to close the investigation in July 2024, allowing the negotiations with Jindal to move forward.
