ThyssenKrupp is a major German (yes, it includes that Krupp) engineering and steel company (its steel facility in Duisburg is Europe’s largest). Its steel business has struggled for a while and is now facing major production cutbacks.
The steel division’s executive board said production capacities would be reduced to approximately 9 million to 9.5 million tons per year, which roughly corresponds to the shipping level of the past three years. Today production capacity at the site is designed for around 11.5 million tons.
The announcement marks the most concrete step so far in the steel business revamp, which has become necessary in light of weakening demand and brutal competition from cheaper Asian rivals.
That’s true enough, but it’s not quite the whole story.
A clue as to what’s missing is tucked away toward the end of the Reuters report:
The division’s goal of climate-neutral production by 2045 at the latest remains unrestricted, it said in the statement.
Turn to what the company itself has to say to find this:
With the planned realignment, Germany’s largest steel company is responding on the one hand to the persistently weak state of the economy, but primarily to fundamental medium and long-term structural changes in the European steel market and in crucial customer and target markets. These include, among other things – especially in Germany – the continuing upward trajectory of energy costs owing to climate policy objectives, as well as unchecked rising import pressure, mainly from Asia, and an ongoing deterioration in the steel trade balance, which in aggregate are making for reduced industry competitiveness. [Emphasis added.]
But:
There will be no changes to the already initiated implementation of the green transformation.
Of course there won’t.
And yes:
The goal of fully climate-neutral production by 2045 at the latest remains unrestrictedly in place.
The same, unfortunately, will not prove true for ThyssenKrupp’s workforce.