Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

BUSINESS

Amazon looks east, away from German strikes

Hit by labour disputes and strikes in Germany, US online giant Amazon is considering five new logistics centres in the Czech Republic and Poland, a Polish economic daily reported on Monday.

Published: 30 September 2013 16:21 CEST

Amazon looks east, away from German strikes

Photo: DPA

The report comes after several hundred employees of its German centres went on strike after Amazon refused to bring pay in line with comparable work in the distribution sector. Walkouts were also held in May and June.

The new centres, which would have lower labour costs, would each measure around 100,000 square metres and cost from €50m to €60m the Puls Biznesu newspaper said, citing anonymous sources.

Regional development agency official Ewa Kaucz in the western city of Wroclaw told the daily that talks were ongoing but no final decision had been made.

According to the daily, two centres could open near Wroclaw, with another in the western city of Poznan, for a total Polish workforce of 6,000 people. A first centre could open next year aimed at serving Western Europe, it said.

Two others could open in the Czech Republic. An earlier report by the Czech business daily Hospodarske noviny said Amazon was mulling a centre near the Prague airport.

Amazon employs 9,000 people in Germany at eight logistics centres, two customer service centres and at the German headquarters in the southern city of Munich.

READ MORE: First strike hits Amazon German unit

AFP/tsb

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

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!