South Africa\u2019s second-largest steelmaker Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium confirmed on Monday that it had temporarily ceased steel production at its steelworks, citing working capital constraints and reduced domestic demand mainly owing to a \u201csignificant\u201d increase in steel imports from China. <\/p>\n
The group said in a statement that it was currently communicating with its employees, adding that it intended to resume production once adequate funding had been secured and steel trading conditions had improved to ensure the company\u2019s sustained future financial viability.<\/p>\n
The decision to halt production at the company\u2019s ironmaking division was brought about by delayed debtors payments; inadequate cash to procure the required raw materials to continue with manufacturing operations; difficulties experienced with access to funding; and a continued inability to pay major creditors timeously, it outlined. <\/p>\n
The company added that the feeding of raw materials into the ironmaking kilns had been halted to enable the furnaces to be safely drained and switched out, ready for a future start-up. \u201cThe steel plant will be stopped and made safe once all the hot metal has been processed. The two mills will continue operating until all the available stocks have been rolled into saleable products, whereafter these operations will also be safely stopped. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll plant and equipment will, for the moment, be placed on care and maintenance and prepared for future start up,\u201d it held. <\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s largest steel producer ArcelorMittal South Africa (AMSA) had also recently spoken out about the difficult conditions facing local steel producers, with AMSA CEO Paul O\u2019Flaherty last week confirming that the industry was seeking greater protection from steel imports through the implementation of a 10% ad valorem duty on such imports.<\/p>\n
Source: engineeringnews.co.za<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Africa\u2019s second-largest steelmaker Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium confirmed on Monday that it had temporarily ceased steel production at its steelworks, citing working capital constraints and reduced domestic demand mainly owing to a \u201csignificant\u201d increase in steel imports from China. The group said in a statement that it was currently communicating with its employees, … Continue reading “SA steelmaker Evraz Highveld halts operations”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[144,12120,12121,12017,12119],"class_list":["post-19798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-and-finance","category-news","tag-china","tag-highveld","tag-imports","tag-steel","tag-vanadium"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19799,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19798\/revisions\/19799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}