The steel industry lost more than one third of production, which reached 3.1 million tons last year, while pipe production went down 25% and rolled products output halved.
Professor Victoras Geanta, with the Polytechnic University of Bucharest says this is a natural trend and ‘in line with what’s happened in Europe” in the past two and a half decades.
“Many production facilities moved to Ukraine, Thailand and China because Europe wants to keep clean. It’s only a natural evolution of the industry,” Geanta says.
The worst year for this industry was 2009, when the economic crisis proved to politicians in Bucharest that Romania was not shielded from what was going on in the rest of the world. The industry later recovered somewhat, and grew by 19% in 2014 compared with 2009.
The revenue of the leading companies in the steel industry stood at more than 10 billion lei (EUR2.2 billion) revenue in 2014, an increase of 1.7% on 2013.
The Economy Ministry estimates the metal industry (including steel) production will go up by 1.8% this year, after having gone up 4.4% 2014, compared with a 7.8% decline in 2013.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)