At the 28th ordinary general assembly meeting held yesterday, April 3, Turkey-based long steel producer Kardemir Karabuk Demir Celik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. (Kardemir) shared its 2022 evaluations and announced further investments for the coming years.
Speaking at the meeting regarding investments, Alparslan Bayraktar, chairman of Kardemir, stated that Kardemir aims to invest up to $1 billion in the period between 2023 and 2028, in line with the company’s goals to increase its high-value added product capacity and exports.
Meanwhile Mr. Bayraktar reported that the company produced 2.22 million mt of crude steel and 2.14 million mt of finished products in 2022, breaking its annual production record at blast furnace No. 5, despite a shutdown due to maintenance works at blast furnaces No. 1 and No. 4. In the given year, the company’s beam, thick bar in coil and railway wheel sales increased by nine percent, 41 percent and 456 percent, respectively, all year on year. Bayraktar stated that in 2022 the company recorded a $45.5 million export income from the sales made to the EU, the Balkans, North Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. In addition, the company added 136 high value-added products, mainly high-strength bars in coils, engineering steels, and specialty bars in coil, to its portfolio in 2022.
Stating that the company achieved positive results in terms of both profitability and cash flow with the increasing demand in the first half of the year, the company chairman said that the global steel industry was negatively affected in the second half of the year due to the impact of the war between Russia and Ukraine on demand and energy costs. Despite all these unfavorable conditions, the company’s sales revenues increased by 85.5 percent year on year to TRY 27.39 billion ($1.42 billion) in 2022, as SteelOrbis previously reported.