CRU: Tata Steel looks to shed 1,600 jobs in the Netherlands

“Tata Steel remains committed to ensuring that its Netherlands operations achieve their potential of being one of the most competitive, successful and efficient in Europe. In order to achieve this, Tata Steel Nederland has adopted a comprehensive transformation programme built on a multi-pronged approach of maximising production efficiencies, lowering fixed costs and optimising product mix and margins.”

The company pledged it will conduct an effective and comprehensive consultation process with the central works council in the coming weeks about the proposed changes.

Union leader Hans Korver described the announcement as a bolt out of the blue. “We were particularly surprised by the scale of the cuts,” the AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

A union federation, FNV, said it did not understand Tata’s restructuring, adding, “There are no detailed plans. They only thing created now is chaos.”

In a stock market filing announcing the planned changes, Tata Steel highlighted that IJmuiden came close to achieving crude steel production capacity of 6.75 Mt/y in the financial year ending March 31 after a delayed blast furnaces reline the previous fiscal year.

The company also said it still plans to replace IJmuiden’s two blast furnaces with a direct reduced iron (DRI) plant and electric arc furnace (EAF) by the decade’s end. Tata Steel’s CEO and managing director of Tata Steel T V Narendran said, “We are working closely with the Dutch government and other stakeholders and are in constructive discussions about our joint investments in the green steel plan going forward.”

This article was first published by CRU. To learn about CRU’s global commodities research and analysis services, visit www.crugroup.com.