Austrian steel producer Voestalpine AG has announced that it has suspended the evaluation process for the establishment of a new steel plant on the Black Sea, due to the recessive developments anticipated in 2009 and the uncertainty regarding the cyclical trend for the following years.
Accordingly, Voestalpine will abandon the activities started during the course of securing a potential site in Constanta, Romania. On future reactivation of the project, Voestalpine plans to examine again four possible locations on the Black Sea for its new steel facility, in Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.
As SteelOrbis previously reported, the new steel plant was to be similar to the company's existing plant in Linz (Austria) and was to have an annual production capacity of five million metric tons of flats. Judging from the parallel with the company's Linz-based mill, it was expected that the new facility would specialize in the production of slabs, plates, hot and cold rolled coils and sheets.