The world’s second largest steelmaker ArcelorMittal has decided to temporarily shut down one of the two blast furnaces at its Fos-sur-Mer site (Bouches-du-Rhône), “due to the slowdown in demand for steel and the impact of energy prices,” the group announced on Thursday.
“As soon as market conditions allow it, we will relaunch a two-blast furnace operation in Fos,” indicated Bruno Ribo, director of ArcelorMittal Méditerranée. “In a greatly deteriorated macroeconomic context, coupled with a major impact from the surge in energy prices and an increase in steel imports in Europe, the Fos-sur-Mer site is in turn facing a slowdown in demand for steel,” added the group, which points out that “order forecasts are down for the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023”.
Consequently, “as announced this morning to the staff representatives meeting in the extraordinary CSE, the site is preparing to slow down its activity to adopt one step at one blast furnace instead of two”, indicated the group.
“We refuse orders, because they are not considered profitable”, denounces the CGT
The management specifies that “partial activity measures will be put in place from the beginning of December 2022 to adapt the working time of part of the staff, up to a maximum of one day per week”, according to the group.
“It’s a bit of a thunderclap, even if the management had made the request in September already, because we think it’s not justified,” reacted Sandy Poletto, CGT union representative at ArcelorMittal in Fos. “Yes there is a drop in orders, but it is a management method that causes orders to be refused, because they are not considered profitable, so there you go, the management prefers to resort to partial unemployment and public money”, lamented Sandy Poletto.
Two other blast furnaces shut down in Europe
Two French factories have blast furnaces: in Dunkirk (North), the group’s largest site in Europe, one of the three blast furnaces is currently shut down for maintenance operations, management said.
In addition to its approximately 2,500 employees, the Fos-sur-Mer site also employs 2,500 subcontractors according to the CGT. Its blast furnaces, industrial equipment that can cost hundreds of millions of euros, can never be completely cooled or risk being permanently unusable.
The group had already decided in early September to shut down two of its blast furnaces in Europe, in Bremen (north-west Germany) and in Asturias (northern Spain), in order to cope with falling demand and soaring energy prices.