Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steelmaker, has announced that it will partially halt operations at its Zumarraga steel plant in Spain’s Basque Country due to exceptionally difficult market conditions. Accordingly, the company will transfer production volumes from the plant to its other factories and it will redeploy employees affected by this decision in other plants within the company. The process for the partial cessation of operations in the plant and the transfer of the production to other facilities within the company will be addressed in the coming weeks through a collective transfer procedure.
According to ArcelorMittal’s statement, the Zumarraga plant has been plagued for years by very difficult market conditions, which has led to a deterioration of over 20 percent in margins since 2012. Despite substantial efforts such as improving the quality and costs, increasing production and improving process efficiency, the effect of increased levels of imports, combined with the cost of non-competitive production due to the high price of electricity and the need to import scrap at high costs have led to an unsustainable level of losses in the plant.