Earlier this week, international media reported Thyssenkrupp’s intention to sell its distribution arm, Thyssenkrupp Material Services, as a part of a major restructuring effort intended to increase efficiency by divesting less profitable parts of the company.
“Our goal is to transform Thyssenkrupp into a high-performance and sustainable company with a portfolio of sectors geared to profitable growth,” the company’s spokesperson told Fastmarkets on April 11. “We want every single Thyssenkrupp business to develop in the best possible way and to achieve a sustainable competitive position.
“The declared aim is to generate a permanently positive value and cash flow contribution for the group, and a reliable dividend payment to our shareholders,” the spokesperson added.
“We will continue to pursue our strategy, with a focus on the separation of the Steel and Marine divisions. The primary aim for all sectors is to increase growth and performance. This may include growth through partnerships and portfolio activities, provided this makes sense strategically and technologically,” the spokesperson said.
In August 2024, the company sold a 20% share in its steel business to a Czech private energy company, and was discussing the sale of a further 30% stake.
Thyssenkrupp Materials Services is the group’s trading arm, offering a wide range of processing and logistics services, and employing around 16,000 people. In the fiscal year 2023/24, Thyssenkrupp Materials Services’ adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) was €204 million ($231 million). The division’s sales for the same period were €12.1 billion.
By 2030, Thyssenkrupp, which is the largest steelmaker in Germany, intends to cut steel output by 2.5 million tonnes per year, with 11,000 jobs likely to be eliminated by the fundamental changes taking place across the European steel market.
Thyssenkrupp is currently building a 2.5 million tpy DRI module in Duisburg that was expected to have capacity for around 5 million tpy of low-CO2 steel by 2030.
In March 2025, Thyssenkrupp put on hold a hydrogen tender for its green steel plant due to elevated prices, but said that it was still committed to the Duisburg site’s green transformation.
Crisis in European steel market
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD), the nominal crude steelmaking capacity in Europe is well over 200 million tonnes per year, but actual output volumes have been lagging far behind that in recent years.
In 2022, crude steel production across Europe amounted to 136.30 million tonnes, down from 152.60 million tonnes in 2021, according to data from the World Steel Association (worldsteel). The decline was due to massive output cuts that were implemented by European mills in the third and fourth quarters of 2022, due to deteriorating demand and falling steel prices.
In 2024, steel output rebounded slightly to 129.5 million tonnes compared with 126.3 million tonnes in 2023, according to worldsteel. But the total volume was still below the 159.4 million tonnes recorded pre-Covid in 2019.
Steel production in Germany amounted to 37.23 million tonnes in 2024, up by 5.2% from 35.4 million tonnes in 2023.
But despite that slight rebound, steel production in Germany remained lower, and has been below 40 million tonnes for three years in a row, German steel federation WV Stahl said.
Earlier this week, Dutch steelmaker Tata Steel Nederlands (TSN) added to the problems in the European steel sector when it announced plans to undergo a large-scale transformation that will lead to the loss of about 1,600 jobs at its IJmuiden facility.
In March this year, the European Commission presented a Steel and Metals Action Plan to support the struggling industry, but it remained to be seen how the plan will be implemented and what results it will bring.
So far, the European Commission has focuses on tightening trade policies to protect the local market from unfair imports.
On April 1, the Commission introduced new, tighter, steel safeguard measures to support the domestic steel sector.
And from April 7, the EU has imposed anti-dumping duties on imports of hot-rolled coil from Egypt, Vietnam and Japan.
Europe’s steel sector was still at the heart of several regional economies, with approximately 500 production sites across 22 EU member states, the Commission said. According to EU data, the European steel sector contributes around €80 billion to the bloc’s gross domestic product and supports more than 2.5 million jobs.
