FRANKFURT (Business News) - ThyssenKrupp (TKAG.DE) has attracted interest from peers Vale (VALE5.SA) and Posco (005490.KS) for its struggling steel plants in Brazil and the United States, German weekly WirtschaftsWoche reported.
Citing company sources the magazine said Vale, which already owns 27 percent of the Brazilian plant, would be interested in buying the rest of the joint venture, which has saddled Germany's biggest steelmaker with heavy losses.
South Korea's steelmaker POSCO has shown interest for Thyssen's mill in Alabama, according to an excerpt of a story to be published in the magazine's Monday edition.
ThyssenKrupp was not immediately available for comment.
Earlier this month ThyssenKrupp's Chief Executive Heinrich Hiesinger said he would offer the Brazilian plant to its partner in the slab-producing CSA plant venture and that he would also talk to possible buyers in Asia.
He put the book value of the two mills at 7 billion euros ($ 8.7 billion)- well below the company's investment in the growth projects of closer to 12 billion euros.
The plants in Brazil and Alabama were meant to give ThyssenKrupp a strategic foothold in North America just as the automotive and non-residential construction sectors were picking up in the Unites States.
However soaring costs in Brazil, in particular the strong currency, and rising input prices - combined with lacklustre demand - eroded the logic of a strategy that should have seen slabs produced cheaply in Brazil and sold at advantageous cost to the United States.
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