Another alloy plant about to go bust in Spain. I doubt whether...

Another alloy plant about to go bust in Spain. I doubt whether it will ever open again with the crazy power prices in Europe.

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0	Ferroglobe’s Sabón smelter forced to cut outputby alanpatrickryan

Due to higher power prices Ferroatlántica Sabón is only operating one of two furnaces it had in operating and is waiting to see what steps management might take if power prices remain high. At third furnace at Sabón wasn’t running in 2019.


Ferroatlántica Sabón for an oven in the face of rising costs and values adjustments for this year

The factory halves production this month while deciding on ERTE

Alba Suárez 03.01.2020 | 22:54

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Sabón Ferroatlantic Plant. Carlos Pardellas
Ferroatlántica Sabón, the only ferroalloy factory that the multinational Ferroglobe (Villar Mir Group) maintains in Galicia, has started the year with a reduction in its production, waiting for the company and the workers to agree on the adjustment for 2020 after the bad results in the auction of electrical premiums and the consequent increase in the cost of energy for this electro-intensive plant that employs 122 workers. The company committee expects to know this month the activity forecasts for the remainder of the year and if the firm will activate or not in A Coruña the ERTE (temporary employment regulation file) that it maintains in suspension. Meanwhile, with the entry of the year and the rise in the price of light,
"In the auction [of interruptibility for the first half of 2020] we only get three blocks of five megawatts (MW), so the electric cost has skyrocketed at the beginning of January and the company has decided to make a technical stop first with one and then with the other of the two furnaces that worked until now [the factory has a third furnace that was not activated in 2019]; we hope that by the end of the month the management will inform us of the workload for this year, "explains the president of the works council, Alberto Ferreiro.

The bonuses that the Sabón factory receives to reduce its electricity bill have been drastically reduced. If so far he enjoyed an allocation of 40 MW of interruptible power (the company receives discounts in exchange for its availability to interrupt its consumption at the time the system requires it), with the last bid it has fallen to 15 MW (a 62%), with the consequent decrease in the economic allocation. The result is that Ferroglobe is more expensive to produce silicon in Arteixo this month than the previous one.
The committee does not want to anticipate events, while maintaining contacts with the company's management to discuss the workload for the first half of this year and its effects on employment. The possibility of a work adjustment is on the table and its conditions, in fact, have already been agreed since February 2019, when Ferroglobe approved a two-year ERTE for all its workforce in Spain. That file has been suspended since then waiting for the conditions of the electricity market that the Government promised to modify (electro-intensive statute) to be finalized. But last month the company decided to apply temporary layoffs to half of its workforce in Cantabria.

Translated by google
https://www.laopinioncoruna.es/econ...tlantica-sabon-horno-alza-costes/1465269.html