Why ArcelorMittal blames Eskom and Transnet for losses
Company blames Eskom and Transnet for high costs
ArcelorMittal SA blamed Eskom and Transnet for unsustainable service costs as it posted another loss on Thursday for the interim period to June 2017. The company said Eskom’s winter tariffs for its plants were 183% higher than electricity costs for the next most expensive plant in the global ArcelorMittal group. Meanwhile, Transnet tariffs — including for ports — were extremely high. "For the past five years, we have paid Transnet a tariff that is 50% more than the PPI [producer price index]," ArcelorMittal SA CEO Wim de Klerk said. He also said Eskom was not prepared to go to the National Energy Regulator (Nersa) and fight on behalf of its big clients. Instead, the utility told ArcelorMittal SA to go to Nersa itself. He said that ArcelorMittal SA was spending an "inordinate amount of time" assisting downstream steel producers in SA, who faced a flood of imports of Chinese finished steel products. Meanwhile, there was huge domestic production overcapacity in South African steel mark...
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