AISI cited Mr Gonzalo Urquijo member of ArcelorMittal’s group management board as saying that “We want to stress very much our presence in the long market of Algeria because we believe there is an important growth that can occur there in the following years.”

Mr Urquijo said that “ArcelorMittal is currently preparing next year’s budgets for its steelworks in northern Africa Annaba in Algeria and Sonasid in Morocco. In the case of Annaba we want to improve the reliability of this plant and the social situation which has not been easy this year. Annaba suffered some strike action over pay earlier this year.”

He said that “In terms of Morocco, the market now is quite cool, as for Europe. However, we continue planning to produce 1.5 million tonnes of rolled products there in our Sonasid installations in the two rolling mills in the north and east of Morocco and we do think that will be a good market going forward.”

According to ArcelorMittal’s annual filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Annaba is an integrated steelworks producing rebar, wire rod, seamless pipe, hot and cold rolled and hot dip galvanized coil and tinplate. In 2009, it produced 0.6 million tonne of crude steel.

(Sourced from AISI)