Roland Wissburn: Six Strategies to Establish Iron and Steel Status in China

The 2nd Global Think Tank Summit was held in Beijing from 25th to 26th, and Roland Wiesburn, Vice President of ArcelorMittal Group, said at the forum on the 26th that it was possible to enable them to establish the status of steel in China. Six strategies. First of all, we need to have capital. We need to have raw materials and environmental protection. We have very good materials for environmental protection, and the fourth is such an entry into the global market. We have a lot of management techniques, how are we going to share these resources in a global scope with such talent resources, and finally we need high technology.

The following is a record of Roland Weatherworth’s statement:

Roland Wiesburn: Good afternoon, as the host said, thank you very much for inviting me. Including in the past two years I have also talked about many very important issues in this forum. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Today I want to talk about what ArcelorMittal is, what I talk about the development of the steel industry in the second, and the third thing I say about how Arcelor Mittal becomes very powerful after the crisis. What does this mean for China and how does it bring more value to China?

First of all, we are a very large steel industry. We have our own operating base in 20 countries. Most of our steel production is in the United States, Canada, and Europe. We are a very mature company and have a lot of steel output in China. At the same time we are also the fourth largest group of iron ore producers and we have a vertical strategy. This will allow us to maximize our steel production by 2015.

Before the crisis we had about 110 million tons of steel, and then we could only reduce our production by 30%, in order to survive in this industry. Let's take a look at this slide. In 2010, we had very good measures to produce 90% of the previous steel.

What should we do to achieve such a restructuring? It is very meaningful for China's emerging countries. In the past, the output of our steel production was about 4%. Everyone on this slide showed that our steel growth was about 5.8% to 6%. From 1973 to 1998, it was about 0.4%, and from 1998 to 2007 it was about 6.3%. On this slide, because we have a very mature market, we expect the output to be around 0.3, which is similar to what we saw before. Especially in China, its output is about 6%.

What will we do? We have four important strategies for vertical integration. For example, if you own coal, steel, and raw materials, you can become the winner in the market. At the same time we want to provide our customers with the best materials and best products. At the same time we want to work together with our customers, we produce steel to provide our customers with the best products.

The last point is also very important, and it is called sustainable development. As our group, we also attach great importance to climate change and issues like environmental protection. What should we do in China? We have two very important cooperations. The first one is Hualian Iron and Steel, which is a steel group in Hunan Province. The other one is China Eastern's cooperation. This is very important to us. For us, the two cooperation projects give us such a cooperation platform that allows us to do more in China. This is our six strategies that will enable us to establish the status of steel in China.

First, we need to have capital. We need to have raw materials and environmental protection. We have very good materials for environmental protection, and the fourth is such an entry into the global market. We have a lot of management techniques, how are we going to share these resources in a global scope with such talent resources, and finally we need high technology.

Finally, I want to talk about what we think is the most important thing in the steel industry. I would like to talk about that we are developing ultra-low carbon dioxide steelmaking. We are also developing ultra-high-strength steel, which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is very important for environmental protection. At the same time, we also have a global recycling of steel tanks that can achieve a recovery rate of 68%. This is a very big project. If we have the help of the European government, we can make steel production more sustainable. At the same time, we can also cooperate with Chinese steel companies. These are our strategies for the next few years.