The Liberty Ostrava smelter is threatened by its supplier Tameh Czech to stop all energy supplies within a few days. The smelter owes it money and does not pay, so Tameh has no money to buy coal, Tameh spokesman Patrik Schober said today. Liberty spokeswoman Kateřina Zajíčková said that the company would issue a statement within a day. The situation was brought to the attention of news server iDnes. Jakub Unucka (ODS), deputy governor of Moravia-Silesia, pointed out that several thousand residents of Vratimov, which is adjacent to the smelter, depend on Liberty’s heating system.
“Liberty Ostrava has not paid Tameh for the energy supplied for half a year and owes Tameh CZK 2 billion or CZK 1.2 billion in overdue invoices. Because of this, Tameh has run out of money and will run out of coal this week. This means Tameh cannot produce power,” Schober said. In addition to electricity, various gases and steam are involved.
“We just don’t have the money to buy that coal because Liberty doesn’t pay, they owe, and if we don’t have coal, we don’t have anything to produce from. The boilers will gradually start shutting down,” Schober said.
For Vratimov residents, Tameh’s boilers are the only source of heat. The county therefore approached Veolia to see if it would be technically possible to supply Vratimov from its heating system. “There are daily negotiations between Vratimov, Liberty, Tameh and Veolia. This has resulted in an agreement that will ensure Vratimov’s heating is supplied without any disruption. Whether the reconnection actually happens or whether the boilers can be prevented from going out in the last hours will no longer affect the residents of Vratimov. They will have heat,” said Unucka.
Court spokesmen Igor Krajdl and Zajíčková both confirmed this month that the Regional Court in Ostrava had declared an individual moratorium to protect the smelter from Tameh. Liberty itself applied for that protection. It now has a 30-day deadline to submit a restructuring plan.
Tameh Czech is the former Energetika plant, which was built as part of the former Nova Huta, now Liberty. When the smelter was owned by the ArcelorMittal group, Energetika was spun off into a separate company. In 2019, the Liberty Steel Group of British businessman Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance became the owner of the smelter, but Tameh remained the property of a joint venture between ArcelorMittal and Polish holding Tauron. At the time of the sale of the smelter to Liberty, a long-term power supply agreement was already in place.
Prior to the sale of the smelter to Liberty, trade unionists had warned of a potential problem due to the fact that energy was not part of the deal. Liberty and Tameh have been arguing over prices and payment almost immediately after the sale of the smelter to Liberty. Tameh had threatened to cut power supplies to the smelter as early as this spring because of significant delays in payments.
Liberty Ostrava produces steel mainly for the construction, engineering and petrochemical industries. Even with its subsidiaries, the company has 6,000 employees. Recently, it has been facing a drop in demand and there have been increasing reports that it is struggling to pay its debts.
The company shut down the only blast furnace it had in operation in October, saying it was a temporary shutdown for two weeks due to lack of demand. But it later said the furnace would remain in a so-called warm-down mode, keeping the heat much lower than during normal operation.
This week, Liberty said it plans to start the optimization plan as soon as possible and have the blast furnace back online in January. It will temporarily suspend production of some products for which demand is weak. It plans to buy the semi-finished steel from which it will roll the final products at a favourable price. In a press release, Liberty said it is negotiating with its energy supplier with a view to buying from it at normal market prices to enable the smelter to implement its optimisation plan.
Hejtman Jan Krkoška (ANO) recalled that the region had also asked the government for help. “At our instigation, a working group will be set up to examine the possibility of using money from the Modernisation Fund for Liberty as well, and the Moravian-Silesian Employment Pact is mapping the possibilities of employment for the employees of this company as well as downstream companies,” the governor said.
According to him, the next days will show whether the optimisation plan of the smelter is realistic. However, the Moravian-Silesian Region has no further competence in this matter. “They have assured me that they will continue to pay wages to their employees and will not make any redundancies, and that nothing has changed in the plans to turn the Ostrava smelter into a carbon-neutral producer,” Krkoška said.
Source: Huta Liberty Ostrava and CTK
Photo: Huta Liberty Ostrava
