During the annual assembly of the Italian steel producers' association Federacciai, held in Milan on Monday, June 28, association president Giuseppe Pasini stressed the two main concerns for the Italian steel industry - Europe's inability to defend itself from unfair commercial attacks and also the threat to the competitiveness of Italian enterprises.
Mr. Pasini underlined that the steel industry worldwide is faced with a big overcapacity problem, in particular with the huge capacities mainly located in China and other Asian countries. He said that as a result there is a concrete risk of a diversion towards Europe and the US of the production of Asian mills, which operate under conditions which are not comparable to those of European mills, both in terms of incentives and of real costs. Pasini went on to say, "For this problem we ask the European Commission to restructure the tools of commercial defense existing today, in particular antidumping measures."
As regards the energy consumption levels of the Italian steel industry which every year absorbs 14 percent of the energy and eight percent of the gas consumed by the overall Italian manufacturing industry, the Federacciai president stated, "In the Italian market the steel industry is a big consumer of energy and an increase in energy efficiency is very important for its future competitiveness." In this context, Mr. Pasini remarked that there was an opportunity to look at the domestic production of nuclear energy in order to achieve independence from imported energy.