This decision was taken as the expected steel demand growth has not materialized and market conditions have not improved. The company had taken the battery offline last November due to low demand and tight coke prices.
AMP CEO Wojciech Koszuta stated that keeping the coke battery on hot idle was costly and emphasized that natural gas costs were a factor in this decision. The company decided to shut down the battery completely as it was no longer economical to wait for market conditions to improve.
The 230 employees affected by the decommissioning of the coke plant have been redeployed to other AMP units. The remaining 70 employees will receive transfer offers to other units.
AMP's crude steel production fell by 9% to 3.1 million tons in 2023. Over the last five years, there has been a decline of more than 2 million tons. The closure of the blast furnace in Krakow in 2020, lower steel demand in Europe, an increasing share of imports and uncompetitive production costs all contributed to the decline.
The Krakow plant supplies slabs from AMP's Dabrowa Gornicza plant to feed the hot and cold rolled coil mills and the galvanizing and coil painting lines. It also plans to commission a zinc, aluminum and magnesium coating line in 2025.
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