Acerinox plans to surpass its 2018 levels of 2.4mn mt in melting production this year, along with revenues of €5bn. The company has an annual capacity of 3.5mn mt. It expects Q1 2021 EBITDA to rise slightly from Q4 2020 on strong demand and continued recovery.
In 2020, crude steel production fell by 3.9pc to 2.14mn mt against 2.23mn mt in 2019. Cold-rolled steel production dropped by 13.9pc to 1.38mn mt in 2020 from 1.61mn mt in the previous year. Long steel production declined by 4.2pc to 210,000mt in 2020 from a year ago.
Acerinox Europe produced 679,212mt of steel, while North America Stainless (NAS) made 1mn mt. Its subsidiaries, Columbus Stainless, in South Africa produced 453,051mt, Bahru Stainless in Malaysia made 115,296mt, Roldan e Inoxfil in Spain produced 91,980mt, and VDM Metals produced 64,134mt of steel during the year. The high-performance alloys division achieved a melting capacity of 52,000mt.
Acerinox’s revenues declined by 2pc from 2019 to €4.7bn in 2020. Despite the pandemic, the company’s earnings in 2020 compared to 2019. Acerinox achieved EBITDA of €384mn in 2020, up 5pc against the same period a year ago, while profit before tax was 5.7 times higher at €132mn in 2020 against the prior year. In Q4, net sales amounted to €1.2bn and EBITDA of €131mn.
The management attributed the better performance to cost controls, a strong performance by NAS, and the integration of VDM Metals per acquisition. VDM Metals was acquired in March 2020 with five facilities in Germany and two in the US. The high-performance alloys division achieved net sales of €614mn.
Sales revenue from NAS accounted for 46.7pc of total sales, Europe for 33.8pc, Africa for 7.9pc, Asia 7.2pc, Middle East 3.9pc, and Australia 0.5pc. The company is maintaining investments in the equipment at €101mn in 2021.
Acerinox began operations 50 years ago and has manufacturing facilities in four continents and a presence in 51 countries. It employed 8,195 workers as of the end of December 2020.