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BUSINESS

Lufthansa makes deal with cabin crews

Germany's leading airline Lufthansa said on Tuesday that it had reached a deal with cabin crew representatives to end a bitter dispute that had led to work stoppages.

Published: 13 November 2012 13:43 CET
Lufthansa makes deal with cabin crews
Photo: DPA

The accord entails a near 4.6-percent salary hike on average, said the UFO trade union that represents some 18,000 cabin staff.

Lufthansa said the deal would be valid for two years, from January 1. The airline also agreed to refrain from operational layoffs until the end of 2014.

Lufthansa and the UFO union agreed to mediation in the dispute after staff staged strikes in September grounding hundreds of flights which mostly hit Frankfurt airport, Lufthansa’s main hub and Europe’s third-busiest airport.

The union had initially called for a five-percent pay rise while Lufthansa offered 3.6 percent.

The airline has engaged in a severe cost-cutting programme and has already announced the loss of 3,500 administrative jobs but last month it reported a sharp rise in earnings in the third quarter.

In one concession to the unions, Lufthansa had already agreed not to employ temporary cabin crew until 2016.

AFP/bk

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ENVIRONMENT

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

The Swedish steel giant SSAB has announced plans to build a new steel plant in Luleå for 52 billion kronor (€4.5 billion), with the new plant expected to produce 2.5 million tons of steel a year from 2028.

Published: 2 April 2024 13:44 CEST
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.

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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.

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