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Experts slash German growth forecast by half

Germany's leading economic think-tanks halved the country’s economic growth forecast for 2013 on Thursday.

Published: 17 October 2013 12:36 CEST
Experts slash German growth forecast by half
Photo: DPA

The four institutes – the Ifo in Munich, DIW in Berlin, IW in Halle and RWI in Essen – predicted that Germany’s gross domestic product (GDP) would grow by 0.4 percent this year, compared to an earlier forecast of 0.8 percent.

“The German economy is facing an upturn. It will be carried by domestic demand,” said a joint statement by the four institutes.

The figures are largely in line with forecasts by the German government, which has predicted growth of 0.5 percent for 2013 and 1.6 percent for 2014.

Looking ahead to 2014, the German institutes said they saw a marked upswing from 2013, with growth of 1.8 percent in 2014.

“Growing employment and marked pay increases have already provided for a

robust development in private consumption for quite some time,” they said.

Germany has managed to avoid the recession encountered by many countries as the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis developed.

But economic growth nevertheless slowed to just 0.7 percent in 2012.

READ MORE: Germans are poorer than Italians and French

AFP/tsb

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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.

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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