Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

BUSINESS

Weak first quarter for Electrolux

Electrolux warned investors on Tuesday that first quarter income at the Swedish white goods manufacturer would be “very weak”.

Published: 1 April 2008 17:22 CEST

“The year has started somewhat weaker than we anticipated. Our estimate is that the market declined by 10 percent in February compared to the same month in 2007,” said Electrolux CEO Hans Stråberg in a statement.

“As a consequence of the initially weak trend of the markets in North America and Europe as well as a number of negative non-recurring items, as previously announced, we expect that operating income for the first quarter of 2008 will be somewhat negative,” he continued.

Stråberg cited costs related to a restructuring the company’s European operations, increasingly expensive raw materials, and high marketing costs associated with a major product launch in the US as contributing factors to Electrolux’s lower first quarter income.

The company also affirmed it’s expectations that income for 2008 to be in-line with 2007 income.

Despite the news, shares of Electrolux trading on the Stockholm stock exchange were up 3.6 percent to 101.25 kronor ($16.73) as of 5.20pm.

Sweden's SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå

“The transformation of Luleå is a major step on our journey to fossil-free steel production,” the company’s chief executive, Martin Lindqvist, said in a press release. “We will remove seven percent of Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions, strengthen our competitiveness and secure jobs with the most cost-effective and sustainable sheet metal production in Europe.”

The new mini-mill, which is expected to start production at the end of 2028 and to hit full capacity in 2029, will include two electric arc furnaces, advanced secondary metallurgy, a direct strip rolling mill to produce SSABs specialty products, and a cold rolling complex to develop premium products for the transport industry.

It will be fed partly from hydrogen reduced iron ore produced at the HYBRIT joint venture in Gälliväre and partly with scrap steel. The company hopes to receive its environemntal permits by the end of 2024.

READ ALSO:

The announcement comes just one week after SSAB revealed that it was seeking $500m in funding from the US government to develop a second HYBRIT manufacturing facility, using green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to produce direct reduced iron and steel.

The company said it also hoped to expand capacity at SSAB’s steel mill in Montpelier, Iowa.

The two new investment announcements strengthen the company’s claim to be the global pioneer in fossil-free steel.

It produced the world’s first sponge iron made with hydrogen instead of coke at its Hybrit pilot plant in Luleå in 2021. Gälliväre was chosen that same year as the site for the world’s first industrial scale plant using the technology.

In 2023, SSAB announced it would transform its steel mill in Oxelösund to fossil-free production.

The company’s Raahe mill in Finland, which currently has new most advanced equipment, will be the last of the company’s big plants to shift away from blast furnaces.

The steel industry currently produces 7 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and shifting to hydrogen reduced steel and closing blast furnaces will reduce Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent and Finland’s by 7 per cent.

Url copied to clipboard!