Germany’s biggest steelmaker, ThyssenKrupp, has announced a major restructuring of its business as it seeks to increase its focus on engineering.
The €10 billion divestment plan is designed to enable the company to strengthen its existing competences in engineering and take advantage of opportunities in emerging markets to expand its current business scope.
In a statement, the company said: “As a key element of the new strategy going forward, ThyssenKrupp wants to focus the portfolio and discard business activities for which alternative strategic options are more suitable in order to strengthen the financial base of the group and to provide additional flexibility for the expansion into strategically promising business activities.”
ThyssenKrupp will separate the activities of its stainless steel business and investigate “all options” regarding its continuation outside the group. It said that separation would result in “an independent European market and quality leader within the stainless steel industry”.
The company will also divest its US-based iron casting business, ThyssenKrupp Waupaca, which has sales of almost €900 million and around 3,000 employees; its Tailored Blanks unit, a system partner in body and chassis manufacturing for the automotive industry with sales of around €600 million and nearly 900 employees; and its traditional springs and stabilizers business activities as well as the Brazilian Automotive Systems business, which have joint sales of approximately €700 million and more than 3,000 employees.
The company also plans to bundle the chassis business activities of the Bilstein Group and Presta Steering, which it says will result in one of the largest global chassis full service providers with sales of around €2.2 billion and nearly 6,500 employees.
In total, current and prospective divestments agreed upon by the company’s board approximate €10 billion and 35,000 employees.
Based in Essen, Germany, ThyssenKrupp is an integrated materials and technology group with almost 177,000 employees in more than 80 countries.
