U.S. Steel Košice (source: Courtesy of USSK)
Last year was successful for the Košice-based steelworks. The European segment of the U.S. Steel concern, which is represented by the plant in the eastern Slovak city, reported a pre-tax profit of $359 million, which is an increase of about 10 percent, the SITA newswire reported.
However, it seems that U.S. Steel Košice will not report similarly high profits in the near future. The reason is, according to the US company, that its European branch faces massive pressures that will reduce the volume of production in the first quarter of 2019 year-on-year, due to higher prices of production inputs in Košice and the unfavourable impact of the euro exchange rate.
U.S. Steel Košice used its production capacity to 100 percent last year. The total production volume of raw steel in the plant amounted to more than 5 million tonnes, while it delivered nearly 4.5 million tonnes of steel to its customers.
Though it was a minimal annual decrease in both cases, the realisation prices in dollars were increased by more than 11 percent. The total revenues of U.S. Steel Košice thus rose by 8.5 percent to $3.228 billions y-o-y, SITA wrote.
