 Antonio
Marcegaglia
|
Marcegaglia
is a market leader in Europe and among the world's
top companies in the transformation of steel.
The company's strength is largely due to its
steel processing capacity. Through its facilities,
spread all over Italy and abroad, more than four
million tonnes of steel are processed every year.
The daily production equals 5,000 kilometres
of welded tubes,
open profiles, drawn tubes, panels, coils, strips
and sheets made from carbon steel, stainless steel
and aluminium, in every size and thickness. Sjef
Roymans and Donald
Wiedemeyer visited Antonio
Marcegaglia to offer their congratulations on the company's
50th anniversary. |
SR: When will the production
at Marcegaglia's Chinese plant start?
AM: Most probably in the second quarter
of next year. We will start with the production of carbon
steel and we are planning to use stainless steel machines
that we are already using in some of our existing plants.
After the initial phase we will order new machines.
SR: What is Marcegaglia's
strategy concerning the stainless steel segment? Is
there a tendency to invest more into the development
of stainless steel grades?
AM: When we talk about tubes Marcegaglia
is undoubtedly the number one manufacturer worldwide.
We have
already invested € 120 million into an annealing
and pickling line as well as into a cold rolling mill
facility at our headquarter in Gazoldo. This is a very
significant investment that provides us with self-sufficiency
in pickling and rolling. This investment will also
enable us to enter the stainless steel flat market.
I guess that we will sell between 120,000 and 150,000
tonnes of stainless steel coils, sheets and strips,
in addition to our
growing tube segment. The stainless steel segment is
only one part of Marcegaglia's
product portfolio which makes up 12 to 15 percent of
our total production and turnover.
The growth of our stainless steel tubular products worldwide
is another important
target. Thus, we are also making large investments abroad.
Our focus is particularly on Russia, where we have
opened a new plant in Vladimir, but also in China with
large investments in carbon steel tubing and precision
tubing. In Brazil and in the US we are also developing
our product range. In three to four years time we expect
a total capacity of 180,000 tonnes of welded tubes, which
hopefully increases to 300,000 tonnes, depending
on the development in China, Russia and Brazil. From
China we will serve the Southeast Asian market aiming
to grow significantly in stainless steel tubing. We should
be able to produce an additional 150,000 to 200,000 tonnes
of flat steel.
We hope to come close to half a million tonnes of converted
stainless steel which would turn Marcegaglia into one
of the biggest transformers independent from steel mills
worldwide.
SR: The key clients of
Marcegaglia are distributors and stockholders. Are
there any ambitions to focus more on the endusers?
AM: Yes, we want to grow into different
directions. The history of the Marcegaglia group shows
that there has always been growth into different directions,
be it geographically or concerning our product range
or end-users. We would rather appreciate to cooperate
with our distributors in terms of end-user acquisition
than building up our own pool of end-users.
We have high ambitions and while we are the number
one producers of flat products in Europe focussing
on stainless steel flat products, we still aim to increase
our percentage of the European market share. Our second
focus is on the growing markets in South America, Russia
and China. In a few years time, even if the worldwide
consumption of stainless steel will not be immense,
the focus will certainly be on those countries.
China and Russia have only a few qualified players
and in South America we have the monopoly as the biggest
producer. We consider expansion in terms of market
share and product range.
next>> --------------------------
 Exclusive
interview with Antonio Marcegaglia
source:
www.stainless-steel-world |
