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BUSINESS

Hugo Boss smashes sales records as Europe booms

German fashion house Hugo Boss said Friday it clocked up record sales and operating profit in 2015, even as growth slowed in the fourth quarter due to "challenges" in China and the United States.

Published: 16 January 2016 10:42 CET
Hugo Boss smashes sales records as Europe booms

“Hugo Boss has increased sales and operating profit to new record levels in the past 12 months. Hence, 2015 marked the sixth consecutive year of growth,” the company said in a statement.

In the fourth quarter alone, a “strong performance in Europe drove solid top line growth. Continued challenges in China and the US, however, dampened sales and profit development,” it said.

“We continue to experience strong momentum in Europe despite rising political uncertainties in the region,” said chief executive Claus-Dietrich Lahrs.

Group sales increased by 10 percent to €750 million ($822 million) in the period from October to December.

Fourth-quarter operating profit edged up 2.4 percent to €171 million.

Taking the year as a whole, group sales grew by nine percent to €2.809 billion and full-year operating profit rose by one percent to €594 million, Hugo Boss said in preliminary figures.

It added that it would published final audited figures for both the fourth quarter and the full year on March 10th.

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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