Voestalpine navigates through delivery obstacles after floods

Austria and Germany are seeing steel delivery delays due to the recent floods, says voestalpine chief executive Herbert Eibensteiner.

“There were short-term problems with shipping, but we are logistically well positioned and can switch to rail,” he told Kallanish during a conference call on Wednesday. “It is a difficult time, but we’ve survived everything well … We essentially supplied the plants.”

The steelmaker does not at present expect future disruptions resulting from the flooding, he added.

“A general topic in the industry is the replenishment of stocks at customers and customer segments, because orders cannot be fully fulfilled because supply chains are incomplete,” Eibensteiner said. “The demand was so great that it was not possible to build up the intermediate storage facilities very much, but this extreme tightness in the market will perhaps stabilise in the course of the financial year.”

The floods in some parts of Europe not only caused great damage, but also increasingly impaired logistics (see Kallanish passim). For example, shipping on the Rhine and some railway lines are blocked, which is now leading to bottlenecks in the supply of wagons.

The German and Austrian scrap markets have so far seen no effects from the flooding.

Svetoslav Abrossimov Bulgaria