“The largest German steel producer Thyssenkrupp Steel wants to reduce production capacity in the Ruhr region, lay off staff and close the company.”, — write: www.ukrinform.ua
By 2030, it is planned to eliminate about 5,000 jobs in steel production and in the management of the steelmaking division. Another 6,000 jobs may be eliminated due to the sale of this business segment.
In particular, it plans to close the Kreuztal-Eichen refinery in Siegerland in North Rhine-Westphalia and sell Hüttenwerke Krupp Mannesmann (HKM) in Duisburg, in which it has a stake. However, if the sale fails, HKM is also at risk of closure.
The company expects that as a result of such optimization, personnel costs will be reduced by ten percent in the coming years.
At the same time, the production capacity of Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe (TKSE) will be reduced to 8.7-9.0 million tons of steel per year. For comparison: today, metallurgical plants on the Rhine and Ruhr, which employ almost 27,000 people. persons, designed for an annual production of 11.5 million tons.
With the help of cuts, Thyssenkrupp wants to respond to problems in the steel market in Europe: currently the plants have only a few orders, for example, from an important group of customers in the automotive industry. The industry is suffering from overcapacity, not least because of an increase in cheap imports, especially from Asia.
Read also: Canada introduces duties on Chinese steel and aluminum As noted on the Thyssenkrupp website, this is an international industrial and technological group with about 98,000 employees. The company’s sales in the 2023/2024 financial year amounted to 35 billion euros in 47 countries. About 3,900 employees work in research and development around the world.
It will be recalled that the largest German car manufacturer Volkswagen recently announced plans to cut thousands of jobs.
Photo: EPA