Speaking to the Financial Times, Toker Özcan, head of the mining metallurgy group at OYAK, the Turkish military pension fund, stated that the company’s first move will be to boost productivity at British Steel, following its signing of an exclusivity agreement last week to acquire the UK-based steelmaker, which SteelOrbis previously reported. This decision could cause several hundred job losses among more than 4,000 workers at British Steel, according to informed sources.
Declining to comment on the job losses, Toker Özcan stated, “I am not focused on headcount but on productivity.” He also added that productivity at British Steel’s main plant in Scunthorpe was rather low compared with other steel plants in Europe and that OYAK “will take productivity to where it needs to be”.
Özcan stated that OYAK aims to increase output at Scunthorpe steel plant to 3 million mt per year, compared to the 2.8 million mt output in 2018. The company also targets to improve the capacity to 3.2 million mt per year after it modernizes production.