ThyssenKrupp CSA

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ThyssenKrupp Companhia Siderúrgica do Atlântico

logo
legal form Sociedade limitada
founding 2006
Seat Rio de Janeiro , Brazil
management
Branch steel
Website www.thyssenkrupp-csa.com.br

Steel mill near Rio de Janeiro

ThyssenKrupp CSA Ltda (full name ThyssenKrupp Companhia Siderúrgica do Atlântico , also TKCSA) operates an integrated steel mill in Santa Cruz in the province of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, which was completed in 2010 .

Location and description

The facility is located 70 kilometers from the city center in the western zone of the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro , in Sepetiba Bay in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The plant consists of a sintering plant , two blast furnaces, two continuous casting plants , a coking plant as well as its own seaport and power plant and has a capacity of 5 million t / year.

background

The plant was built from September 2006 to June 2010 together with the Brazilian mining company Vale . It is the largest German foreign investment in Brazil in recent years. Around 3700 people work in the plant.

At the beginning of the project, ThyssenKrupp commissioned management consultancy McKinsey to carry out a feasibility study, within which the total costs for the plant construction were calculated at 1.9 billion euros. According to this study, steel slab should be produced at 55 $ / t more cost-effectively than in Germany. According to press reports, ThyssenKrupp has now invested 8 billion euros in the project. The steel slab produced in the plant was around $ 170 per slab more expensive in 2012 than the German slab. According to the original plans, the plant was to produce five and a half million tons of steel slabs per year for export to the USA and Europe. The coking plant was constructed by the Chinese company CITIC , although ThyssenKrupp has a subsidiary specializing in plant construction in Uhde . However, due to technical problems, the plant had not yet run up to full load until 2012. In 2015, CSA produced 4 million tons of steel.

At the end of November 2011, the full extent of the impairment was revealed by an expert opinion, said Gerhard Cromme at the annual general meeting in January 2012. When building the plant, the forecast costs were far exceeded: it now cost 8 billion euros. ThyssenKrupp made write-downs of almost 2 billion euros on the steel business in Brazil and posted a loss of 1.8 billion euros in fiscal 2010/2011. Ekkehard Schulz , CEO (from 1999 to January 2011) and then Supervisory Board member of ThyssenKrupp, who was largely responsible for the decision to build the plant, resigned from his position on the Supervisory Board at the end of 2011.

In 2016 ThyssenKrupp took over Vale's 27% stake. In February 2017 ThyssenKrupp sold the plant to Ternium .

Conflicts

As a result of the construction, there were conflicts with the people living there. Fishermen have been protesting against the power plant since 2007. The bay's fishermen complained about the pollution of the fish-rich coast; More than 8000 families saw their livelihoods endangered by the construction site of the steel melt and the port facilities. In the opinion of local residents and human rights organizations, the CSA plant violates environmental, labor and human rights. The list of accusations against the group includes: environmental violations, contamination in the bay, building in a conservation area and illegal clearing of mangrove forests, violations of labor regulations, circumvent officially ordered construction freeze, privatization of public water and an increase in carbon dioxide - emissions of the city of Rio de Janeiro by 76% through the steel mill. One of the fishermen received death threats, according to the security chief of the TKCSA. According to statements made by fishermen from Sepetiba Bay in November 2009 in the European Parliament , in the German Bundestag and in January 2010 at a ThyssenKrupp shareholders' meeting, TKCSA security forces also belong to armed militias.

A high-ranking official of the Brazilian trade union umbrella organization CUT complained that activists of the union had been evicted from the premises by the security service of the TKCSA at gunpoint.

Although the Human Rights Commission of the Parliament of Rio officially demanded the publication of the water quality data for months, the responsible environmental agency of the state of Rio de Janeiro, INEA , refused to release the data. On the eve of the opening of the steelworks, the President of the Environment Agency affirmed in the daily Globo that all of ThyssenKrupp's environmental compensations were appropriate. A statement by the group to the German Bundestag on January 27, 2010 shows that the INEA environmental agency received the equivalent of around two million euros from ThyssenKrupp for the renovation of its headquarters. The residents' association saw the independence of the INEA environmental agency being called into question, and the public prosecutor's office of the state of Rio de Janeiro also had initial suspicions of a conflict of interests on the part of the environmental agency.

After the steel mill started operations, residents complained about air pollution, even though ThyssenKrupp had repeatedly stated that the steel mill project was state-of-the-art. The residents reported throat irritation and necessary hospital visits. Children living near the steel mill suffered severe skin injuries after coming into contact with chemical residues while playing. The plant management had not informed the authorities about toxic emissions, especially heavy metals. In August 2010, the ThyssenKrupp / Companhia Siderúrgica do Atlântico (TKCSA) consortium was sentenced by INEA to pay the equivalent of 750,000 euros, to reduce production from the planned 6000 to 3000 tons per day and to limit melting to five days a week for violating Brazil's environmental protection regulations .

In December 2010, the public prosecutor in Rio de Janeiro brought charges against the TKCSA and several people responsible for the steel mill for massive environmental violations. Those responsible for the project face up to 19 years imprisonment. Penalties, the complete or partial closure of the plant as well as the temporary exclusion of government contracts for a period of five years and the withdrawal of tax breaks are also possible. According to a report by the Institute for Geosciences of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro , the permissible limit values ​​in the vicinity of the steel mill were exceeded by up to 600% for some pollutants. As part of the process is also against the plant security of the company determined. The fishermen protesting against the steelworks had repeatedly reported since 2008 that the works security was employing members of so-called mafia militias, who threatened them.

The fishermen sued the ThyssenKrupp steelworks for loss of earnings in fishing in the civil courts in Rio de Janeiro. The 5763 fishermen, united in seven class actions, demand a total of 756 million euros.

Due to a decree of the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Sérgio Cabral, who feared the layoff of 800 workers, the company was able to start up the second blast furnace in mid-December 2010. As a result, the residents' houses in the immediate vicinity of the steelworks site were covered with a layer of dust made of metal oxides. A resident reported that after starting up the second blast furnace, the dust exposure was worse than ever. Thereupon the environmental agency INEA set a deadline of 30 days for the group management to come to a "definitive" solution to the problem.

According to the federal prosecutor in Rio de Janeiro, Daniel Pereira, ThyssenKrupp did not adhere to the prescribed minimum distance of 1500 meters from the nearest residential buildings when deciding on the location of the steel mill in the Santa Cruz district. An analysis presented in October 2011 by the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), which is subordinate to the Ministry of Health, showed that the dust that the steel mill emits into the environment also contains toxic heavy metals and not, as ThyssenKrupp repeatedly claims, "just graphite" but also "iron, calcium, manganese, silicon, sulfur, aluminum, tin, titanium, zinc and cadmium". TKCSA responded with a civil suit against the three scientists from FIOCRUZ and a university clinic for "non-material damage and others".

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Medeiros é o novo CEO da ThyssenKrupp CSA. (No longer available online.) Www.thyssenkrupp-csa.com.br, June 4, 2014, formerly in the original ; Retrieved December 12, 2014 (Portuguese).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.thyssenkrupp-csa.com.br  
  2. ↑ http://www.stahl-online.de/index.php/csa-ausbau-der-stahlproduktion-bis-2017/
  3. ↑ ThyssenKrupp has to pay more for new steel mills . In: The world
  4. ↑ https://www.thyssenkrupp.com/de/unternehmen/unternehmensstruktur/steel/
  5. ^ Peter Mühlbauer : Deficit like Kruppstahl. heise.de, November 29, 2012, accessed on November 29, 2012 .
  6. ↑ a b c Zeit-Online: Die senkunken billion , (accessed on August 10, 2012).
  7. ^ Christian Russau: Further criticism from Brazil of ThyssenKrupp. In: amerika21. January 30, 2010, accessed December 30, 2010 .
  8. ↑ a b Christian Russau: Brazil: Public Prosecutor investigates Thyssen Krupp's proceedings. In: amerika21. June 22, 2010, accessed December 30, 2010 .
  9. ↑ https://www.thyssenkrupp.com/media/investoren/documents_1/finanzberichte_1/2014_4/thyssenkrupp_2014_2015_gb.pdf
  10. ↑ www.rundschau-online.de
  11. ↑ handelsblatt.com January 20, 2012: Interview
  12. ↑ http://www.finanznachrichten.de/nachrichten-2016-06/37555375-thyssenkrupp-schliesst-komplettuebernahme-von-brasilien-werk-ab-015.htm
  13. ^ Helmut Bünder: Thyssen-Krupp ends expensive Brazil adventure . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of February 23, 2017, p. 22.
  14. ^ Christian Russau: Fischer versus ThyssenKrupp. In: amerika21. January 9, 2010, accessed December 30, 2010 .
  15. ^ Christian Russau: Armed against trade unionists at ThyssenKrupp. In: amerika April 21 , 2010, accessed December 30, 2010 .
  16. ^ Christian Russau: Lawsuits against ThyssenKrupp steel works in Rio. In: amerika21. August 19, 2010, accessed December 30, 2010 .
  17. ↑ Benjamin Beutler: Steelworks contaminated Brazil's coast . In: Neues Deutschland , August 27, 2010
  18. ^ Christian Russau: charges brought against ThyssenKrupp subsidiary. In: amerika December 21 , 2010, accessed December 30, 2010 .
  19. ↑ Rio Environment Agency criticizes ThyssenKrupp. In: amerika21. December 30, 2010, accessed December 30, 2010 .
  20. ^ Heavy metals in the dust from ThyssenKrupp steel works in Rio. In: amerika21. October 26, 2011, accessed October 26, 2011 .