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Danish share prices fall amid global instability

A downturn for Denmark’s stock market continued at an unprecedented rate on Thursday morning, with the leading Danish stock index C25 falling by more than 1.5 percent.

Published: 11 October 2018 13:09 CEST

Danish share prices fall amid global instability

File photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix

The fall represents the eighth consecutive day in which the Danish index has fallen, while the C25 is down by over 13 percent since the beginning of the year, Jyllands-Posten’s financial arm Finans reports.

Medical company Ambu and cleaning equipment producer Nilfisk are among those to suffer most under the most recent downturn, according to the report.

The British, German, Norwegian and Swedish markets also saw falls early on Thursday, Finans reports.

European markets appeared to be affected by falls in the American S&P 500, Nasdaq and Dow Jones indexes, which all fell by more than three percent on Wednesday in the worst day for the US stock exchange in eight months, according to the report.

That fall also spread to Asian markets on Thursday.

“The strong reactions seem to be a combination of concern over higher interest and political uncertainty over the relationship between the US and China as well as the Italian boxing match with the EU,” Andreas Østerheden, a senior strategist with the Nordea bank, told Finans via a written comment.

READ ALSO: Danske Bank shares fall again after new money laundering claims

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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