ACTIVE EVEN IN CRITICAL TIMES
Mitko Kocovski, Sc. D
The best way to understand the current situation in the Macedonian steel industry and its involvement in the modern European economy is with the transitional experiences of ‘Makstil’, the country’s leading steel producer that is now a member of the Duferco Group.
A
lthough the production of steel in the Republic of Macedonia has a 50 years long tradition, in the late 1990s, when the transitional processes in the region were leading to significant system transformations from public and parapublic economies to modern free-market economies, the Swiss corporation Duferco showed an interest in becoming the major shareholder in the leading operator in the Macedonian steel industry. It was the first significant acquisition of a an important industrial company in the Macedonian state economy and the relationship between Makstil and Duferco has become a measure for Makstil’s successful positioning in the multinational production and trade structure of the Duferco group and a guarantee for its future growth. The aim of Duferco was to extend the production cycle from their own steel semi-products to final rolled products in
162 Industry Europe
order to achieve optimal economic production and to become financially stable. It was the only logical response to the privatization of the big steel producers in the industrially developed countries and to the later privatisation of the national steel industries in the central European countries. Therefore Duferco managed to establish Makstil as a solid business by taking over the arrangements for financing the technological and ecologic restructuring, improving the processing equipment, providing basic production inputs, product marketing and retail credit facility.
Meeting EU requirements Part of Duferco’s strategy in taking over Makstil, along with the objective of increasing the group’s production of steel semi-finished products to provide the necessary balanced
quantity, was to comply with the EU regulations for the steel and steel products trade. It was also important to improve the production quality through implementing new technological solutions and to upgrade the processes of the whole production line, to expand the range of products (in both dimensions and quality) in accordance to the new standards and procedures in metallurgy and according to the future expected needs of the consumers, and to adjust costs in accordance with the current cost standards in the world steel industry, Duferco was also guided by new European standards for environmental protection, that is to say the realization of the environmental and regulatory demands of the integrated environmental permit. This last concern was a key business imperative in the implementation of the transformation strategy in accordance
