Media New Year Reception

This year, ArcelorMittal Luxembourg hosted medias at Bissen plant for the New Year reception.

The wire drawing mill was not chosen randomly. Indeed, Bissen plant, espacialized in all type of wires, cables and fencing, moved for WireSolutions to Long Products. That means that more business opportunities will be given to the plant and the coordination chain will be smaller, so more profitable for the site because the value creation is now valid for the whole chain. In consequences around 40 persons will be hired this year. Fencing and agri-business are the main productions of the plant, best customers of the mill are wine producers (for vineyard wire), the SNCF (for fencing the railways in France) and a new one is Leroy Merlin. A new collaboration for private fencing with this French company of Do It Yourself is a huge opportunity to get a wider products panel, at the moment Bissen realize more than 145 orders and deliver 7 platforms per days.

Journalists had the chance to visit the plant from the wire rolling mill to the galvanization line and through even fibers separation (used in concrete), and that in total security to prove how Bissen plant get its good health&safety results in 2018: only 3 accidents occurred without work stopping, the same results as 2017.

This New Year reception was also the occasion to introduce our results in Luxembourg for 2018 and outlooks for 2019.

Michel Wurth and Roland Bastian spoke about the situation of ArcelorMittal Luxembourg in Europe but also about its place in the global market. The strong need for a fair competitiveness with non-European producers was explained as a consequence of high costs for CO2 certificates. European steel producers need to create more value on their products and distinguish with a high standard quality of steel and service. That’s why ArcelorMittal Luxembourg invests a lot in its plants and Research and Development centers. Other response to the carbon challenge have been showed like Steelanol which consists in creating ethanol (for plane for example) with our process gases and a microbial biomass filter.

ArcelorMittal Luxembourg remains one of the biggest private employers of the Grand Duché, 4.061 employees in total, 59 different nationalities and 2.2 million of tons produced in 2018.