Thyssenkrupp wants to limit its steel production due to the weak market situation. For the Duisburg location, this means that jobs will also be cut. How many is not yet clear.
Germany’s largest steel manufacturer Thyssenkrupp has announced that it wants to significantly reduce its production capacity at its Duisburg site. This will also mean job cuts, the extent to which the company has not yet announced.
The company said this step was “absolutely necessary” to maintain its own competitiveness and to lead steel production at the Duisburg site into a secure future. In this way, “high-quality jobs could be secured in the long term” and the basic supply of steel for industrial value creation in Germany could be made resilient. Thyssenkrupp’s statement said: “Deep optimizations in the production network are intended to significantly increase competitiveness and profitability.”
The group’s goal is to reduce installed production capacities to around 9 to 9.5 million tons per year, which corresponds to the level of the past three years. Today’s annual production capacity is designed at around 11.5 million tons. This amount also includes the steel produced by the Duisburg company HKM, in which Thyssenkrupp Steel has a 50 percent stake.
Around 13,000 employees in Duisburg
Thyssenkrupp said that the company’s restructuring would also involve “a reduction in jobs that cannot yet be quantified.” This will also affect downstream processing stages as well as the administration and service areas. Around 27,000 employees currently work in the division, around 13,000 of them in Duisburg.
According to its own statements, the group wants to continue to avoid redundancies for operational reasons. The company has an employment guarantee until 2026.
Weak economy and growing cost pressure
According to its own statement, Thyssenkrupp is reacting to the ongoing weak economy by reducing its capacities, but above all to medium and long-term structural changes on the European steel market and in key customer and target markets. In Germany, the high energy costs that are continuing to rise due to climate policy objectives are putting the company under pressure, and there is also an unbridled increase in import pressure, predominantly from Asia.
Despite the company restructuring, Thyssenkrupp wants to stick to the goal of producing completely climate-neutral production by 2045 at the latest. Therefore, the construction of “the first direct reduction plant at the Duisburg site will continue to be implemented as planned, with support from the funding released for this purpose by the federal and state governments.”
The plans for reducing production capacities should now be further fleshed out and then discussed with co-determination and the responsible committees in the steel sector.