Acerinox Board Quits Merger Talks with Aperam
Strategic Research Institute
Published on :
07 Jun, 2022, 6:55 am
The board of Spanish stainless steel maker Acerinox has announced that it is walking away from preliminary talks with Aperam for a potential tie-up that would have created a European stainless steel giant. Acerinox Board of Directors of Secretary Luis Gimeno Valledor informed the stock xchange “As a continuation of the inside information published on 3 June 2022, Acerinox informs that the Company’s Board of Directors meeting today has unanimously agreed not to continue with the preliminary conversations with Aperam SA to study a possible corporate operation.”
Acerinox is a stainless steel manufacturing conglomerate group based in Spain. The company was founded in 1970, and initially received technical support from the Japanese firm Nisshin Steel. Nisshin continues to hold approximately 15% of Acerinox as of April 2010 according to Wikipedia. Acerinox has several facilities in Spain, Europe, South Africa, Malaysia, US, Argentina & Chile. Its revenue increased by more than 44% to EUR 6,706 million in 2021 with EBITDA totaling EUR 989 million. Acerinox’s melting shop production amounted to 2.6 million tonnes, exceeding that of 2020 by 19% and setting a new all-time record.
Aperam is a company, listed on the Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Madrid and Luxembourg stock exchanges and with facilities in Brazil, Belgium and France, which concentrates on the production of stainless steel and speciality steel. It was spun out of ArcelorMittal at the start of 2011. The Brazilian facility uses charcoal from a series of eucalyptus forests owned and managed by the group rather than coking coal to reduce the material; the European facilities use electric-arc furnaces fed with scrap. The use of charcoal reduces the CO2 footprint of the facility. Its steel shipments totaled 1.819 million tonnes in 2021 with EBITDA of EUR 1,186 million.