Displaying items by tag: ThyssenKrupp

Germany: ThyssenKrupp's consolidated sales rose by 18% year-on-year in its 2021 financial year to Euro34bn. Its adjusted earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) rose to Euro796m, compared to a loss before interest and taxation of 1.76bn in the 2020 financial year. Its order intake during the year rose by 41% to Euro39.6bn.

The company's multi tracks segment, which includes cement plant production, recorded a 2% sales rise and a 34% rise in its order intake. Its plant technology segment's sales fell due to a depressed order intake in the 2020 financial year. It increased its order intake in all business areas and won its first contracts in the hydrogen market. Hydrogen is one of the division's key growth markets.

Chief executive officer Martina Merz said, “After a good two years of intensive transformation work, we can now say that the turnaround is evident. ThyssenKrupp is going in the right direction. Our performance is improving significantly, which is reflected in our figures." She continued, "We aim to benefit from this momentum in the next phase of our transformation in order to restore our businesses to profitable growth. However, enormous challenges remain, especially due to the semiconductor shortage and the uncertainties arising from the coronavirus pandemic.”

India: Denmark-based FLSmidth has agreed with Germany-based ThyssenKrupp to exclude the latter’s mining activities in India from the final deal in its acquisition of ThyssenKrupp Mining. This reduces the total cost of the transaction by 14% to Euro280m from Euro325m. FLSmidth said that the exclusion of the Indian business will not affect the transfer of its key intellectual property and technologies to the supplier as part of the overall transaction.

Denmark/Germany: FLSmidth has agreed to buy ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions’ mining business (TK Mining) for Euro325m. FLSmidth says it hopes that the acquisition will allow it to create a global mining technology provider with operations from pit to plant. The purchase is also expected to benefit FLSmidth’s aftermarket business. The transaction is expected to complete in the second half of 2022 and it will be subject to approval by competition authorities.

TK Mining is a supplier of solutions for mining systems, material handling, mineral processing and services. It is present in 24 countries with engineering and global service centres, and has close to 3400 employees. In 2020 it reported sales of around Euro780m with around one-third deriving from services.

“TK Mining and FLSmidth are a perfect match, and I am proud to announce this agreement to join forces. This is a truly transformational deal allowing us to accelerate our growth ambitions in mining by creating a stronger talent pool and one of the world’s largest and strongest suppliers to the mining industry. Our complementary customer base and improved geographic coverage will offer a strong value proposition to our customers. There is a significant opportunity in transforming TK Mining towards FLSmidth’s business mix and model in which higher margin service business makes up about 60% of revenue. I look forward to welcoming TK Mining’s management team and talented staff to our organisation,” said Thomas Schulz, group chief executive officer of FLSmidth.

India: ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions India has appointed Rajesh Kamath as its chief executive officer and managing director. He succeeds PD Samudra. who plans to retire at the end of June 2021 after being in post since 2014.

Kamath is a graduate engineer from Bangalore University. Previously he was the managing director of Air Liquide Engineering and Construction in India. He has also held executive positions with Technip India and Aker Solutions.

Turkmenistan: Germany-based Thyssenkrupp has received an order for a new 3000t/day line for the Lebap cement plant from Turkmen Enjam. The Arab Times newspaper has reported that the line will include a raw materials crushing and preparation plant and storage facilities.

Germany: ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions has launched GooVi, a digitised vibrating screen with an ‘intelligent’ control system. The supplier says that the screen offers increased efficiency, reduced weight and height. It combines the control system with a new patented drive technology. The product’s name plays on the title of the Beach Boys’ 1967 hit song Good Vibrations.

Head of product line screens and feeders Achim Schönfelder said, “With the GooVi, all vibration modes (circular, linear and elliptical) can be realised in one machine, allowing flexible adaptation to changing job requirements and material properties. In addition, the low height of the GooVi facilitates simple installation in existing plants.”

Germany: ThyssenKrupp has launched an initiative to supply coronavirus testing kits for employees to self-test with. The supplier said that initiative supports the German federal government’s national testing strategy.

Chief human resources officer Oliver Burkhard said, “The health of our employees is our top priority. We want to offer our workforce the best possible protection – quickly, pragmatically and unbureaucratically. The free self-tests are an important part of our strategy for containing the coronavirus pandemic. The expansion of our company’s testing capacities shows that we are taking our social responsibility very seriously and doing everything we can to help.”

Germany: ThyssenKrupp says that the four cement producer members of Cement Innovation for Climate (CI4C) are preparing to launch an industrial-scale trial of its Polysius Pure Oxyfuel carbon capture and storage (CCS) process. The renewably-powered process produces ‘refuel’ synthetic fuels such as kerosene for aviation.

Senior Proposal Manager Markus Sauer said,“CI4C and ThyssenKrupp are currently investigating the use of our polysius pure oxyfuel technology in a demonstration plant. Working with our long-standing customers, we would be delighted if we could demonstrate the efficiency of our technology for the first time on an industrial scale. By using this technology, the cement industry could significantly reduce its process-related CO₂ emissions and thus make an important contribution to climate protection.”

Germany: Beumer Group has appointed Alexander Tigges as the director of global sales for its Conveying & Loading Systems division. He succeeds Andrea Prevedello, who was appointed as chief executive officer of Beumer Group Austria earlier in the year. Tigges, aged 51 years, previously worked for Germany-based ThyssenKrupp in product and sales managerial roles for its cement plant manufacturing subsidiary.

There have been two developments from ThyssenKrupp’s ongoing restructuring worth noting by the cement sector in recent weeks. The first is that the Germany-based engineering and steel producer has stopped trying to sell its cement plant division. The second is that Denmark-based FLSmidth is holding serious talks about buying its mining division.

ThyssenKrupp first announced plans for a major restructuring in mid-2019 with an anticipated reduction of 6000 jobs across the business. The sale of its elevator business for Euro17.2bn to private equity was announced in February 2020. Later in May 2020 it then revealed plans to divide its previous business areas into core, dual and multi track segments. Core - including Materials Services, Industrial Components (Forged Technologies and Bearings) and Automotive Technology – would be kept as before. Dual-track – including Steel and Marine – would either be kept as before or considered for consolidation. Multi-track - including cement plant engineering, mining and more – would be sold, added to a partnership or closed. By size, core reported sales of Euro16.1bn (53%) in the company’s 2019 - 2020 financial year, dual-track reported Euro8.8bn (29%) and multi-track reported Euro5.5bn (18%).

Volkmar Dinstuhl, formerly in charge of mergers and acquisitions, was put in charge of Multi-track. By October 2020 he was publicly admitting that the division was planning to “find a solution for all our businesses within the next two years” including cement plant engineering. In the same interview he described the Multi-track division as an internal private equity fund. However, the elevator business sale has been seen by several commentators as giving ThyssenKrupp more freedom around how to conduct its restructuring. Three months later and Handelsblatt, a German business newspaper, reported this week that ThyssenKrupp’s cement plant division may have avoided its multi-track fate. It cited internal communication to employees about what’s been happening with the sale. Principally, orders have picked up in the company’s new financial year, since October 2020, and although a sale has not been ruled out, it won’t be pursued until late 2021 at the earliest. This is potentially good news for the sector as a sign that the market may be improving and definitely good news for those employees working for the division.

As a competitor, FLSmidth would have been expected to be potentially interested in buying either ThyssenKrupp’s mining or cement plant division, or both. So, the only question was, when it made a point of saying publicly that it was in non-binding negotiations to buy mining, what about cement?

Looking at the numbers shows that FLSmidth’s mining division did better than its cement one in the first nine months of 2020 with order take up year-on-year and the mining industry described as being relatively resilient during the coronavirus crisis, with the majority of mines operational across regions. By contrast it pointed out that the cement market was still ‘severely’ impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and that future cement demand was dependent on general economic growth. Acquisition activity in mining certainly seems like the safer bet at the moment. Yet the temptation to neutralise a competitor may have been a strong one. With the mining deal still in progress and the cement sale possibly ended for now, we’ll just have to wait and see. Other buyers for both divisions are no doubt waiting in the wings should circumstances allow.

One final fun fact to consider is that the man put in charge of selling both of ThyssenKrupp’s mining and cement plant divisions, Volkmar Dinstuhl, just happens to be a World Chess Federation (FIDE) recognised International Master. Being good at chess doesn’t automatically confer skill at anything else. Just look at former world champion Gary Kasparov’s political ambitions in Russia for example. Yet, ThyssenKrupp’s elevator division sale has been seen as one of the largest leveraged European buyouts in recent years and has appeared to have bought it some time to mull its options over its cement plant division. With this in mind, any potential buyers for the rest of Multi-track may be wondering just how many moves ahead this seller is thinking.