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BUSINESS

Volvo posts better-than-expected results despite supply issues

On Thursday, Swedish car manufacturer Volvo Cars on Thursday announced better-than-expected quarterly results despite supply chain problems linked to the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic.

Volvo posts better-than-expected results despite supply issues
Volvo's factory in Torslanda outside Gothenburg. Photo: Adam Ihse/TT

The Gothenberg-based company, majority owned by China’s Geely Holding, said net profit rose to 3.9 billion Swedish kronor (380 million euros, $400 million) against 5.7 billion kronor a year earlier.

Its first-quarter operating profit fell to 6.0 billion kronor, while turnover rose 11 percent to 15.7 billion kronor, beating analyst forecasts.

A global shortage of semiconductors has forced Volvo and other carmakers to cut vehicle output despite robust demand.

The new Covid lockdowns in China and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have exacerbated the problem, Volvo said.

The Ukraine conflict “sent already rising inflation to new heights and further disrupted supply chains that were already fragile”, Volvo chief Jim Rowan said.

“Volvo Cars sold a total of 148,295 cars in the first quarter as the supply chain constraints affecting the company continued to slowly ease,” a statement said.

This was 37,000 fewer than the previous year.

“However, late in the quarter the company was hit by a shortage of a specific component, which will also impact production during the second quarter,” it added.

Volvo however underscored that this was “a temporary setback”, adding it expected “marginal growth in sales volumes for the full year 2022, compared to 2021, although uncertainty is high”.

Volvo sales in its main markets fell 26 percent in Europe, 21 percent in China and 16 percent in the United States.

However, the company, which aims to have an all-electric fleet of cars by 2030, said sales of rechargeable vehicles were rising and represented 34 percent of the total volume in the first quarter.

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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.

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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