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easyJet expects to grow passengers in Germany by 10 million this year

In Berlin alone, the budget airline expects to have 60 percent more passengers, or 5.6 million, in 2018 thanks to the bankruptcy of a former competitor last year.

Published: 28 March 2018 10:10 CEST

easyJet expects to grow passengers in Germany by 10 million this year

easyJet-Airbus A320-214 at Berlin Tegel. Photo: DPA

Through adding more domestic flights, the British carrier also aims to grow from 8 million in 2017 to 18 million passengers this year in Germany, Handelsblatt reported on Tuesday, quoting the company's European head Thomas Haagensen. The spike in numbers could pose serious competition to Lufthansa, currently Germany’s largest airline.

Lufthansa purchased €40 million of Air Berlin, which was formerly the second largest airline in Germany before declaring bankruptcy in August 2017. EasyJet purchased the remaining parts for an undisclosed amount.

While easyJet has been situated at Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport since 2004, it moved to Tegel to take over parts of Air Berlin facilities. It plans to have up to 25 planes based out of Tegel – serving 40 destinations by the end of summer – in addition to the 12 it already has situated at Schönefeld.

EasyJet’s base at Tegel, however, is up in the air after Berlin’s state senate said on Tuesday that it would ignore a referendum in which Berliners voted to keep Tegel open when the much-delayed BER airport finally opens its doors in 2020.

By this summer, Berlin will also be a base of the airline's “WorldWide by easyJet” system, which currently runs out of London-Gatwick, but also plans to expand to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle and Orly, Amsterdam and Venice. The long-haul service will expand its network of discount flights to Asia and the Middle East.

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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