Via Metal Miner
Difficult market conditions have prompted Romanian steel industry leader ArcelorMittal Hunedoara to reduce production until year’s end. According to a notice provided to the Bucharest Stock Exchange, the longs producer’s board of directors decided to reduce production from December 9-31 and pay 75% of salaries to employees impacted by the steps.
The December 6 notice also cited the “economic difficulties faced by the company due to the lack of orders and implicitly of the production volume, as well as a measure to protect employees.” It was not immediately clear where or by how much the company would cut production, or at what percentage of capacity the plant is now operating.
ArcelorMittal’s predecessor company, Mittal Steel, acquired Hunedoara in late 2003. The plant has one electric arc furnace with an annual crude steel capacity of 800,000 metric tons, which it casts into 220×220 square billets on a two-strand continuous caster.
Further downstream, the plant rolls merchant bar in square, round and flat shapes for the construction and machinery sectors. The plant is in central Romania’s historical Transylvania region, about 300 kilometers east of the Hungarian border.
Dutch multinational banking group also downgraded Romania’s GDP outlook for 2024 to 1% from 1.3% in late November / early December. The group partly cited the political climate in the region as a result of the East European state‘s parliamentary elections.
That election took place on December 1 and saw far-right parties make significant gains at the expense of the coalition government, which consisted of the Social Democratic Party and the National Liberal Party.
Meanwhile, Presidential elections on November 24 saw right-wing candidate C?lin Georgescu gain a significant amount of votes against incumbent Klaus Iohannis, though the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled that round on the grounds of alleged Russian interference.
However, the ING report sounded a positive note about 2025. “Despite the uncertainty brought by the ongoing electoral context, we still anticipate GDP growth to accelerate to 2.6% next year,” ING also stated in its December 2 report.
By Christopher Rivituso
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