ArcelorMittal profit falls after Kazakhstan mine disaster

ArcelorMittal withdrew from Kazakhstan following a fatal mining disaster. Photo: STRINGER / AFP/File Source: AFP

Global steel giant ArcelorMittal Thursday posted a tenfold drop in net profit in 2023, taking hits from a withdrawal from Kazakhstan following a fatal mining accident and from its faltering Italian operations.

ArcelorMittal said its profit reached $919 million last year, down sharply from $9.3 billion in 2022.

Sales fell 14.5 percent to $68 billion.

The group slipped into the red in the last three months of 2023, when it was forced to sell its subsidiary in Kazakhstan to the government after a coal mine disaster killed 46 people in October.

It was the worst accident in the Central Asian country’s modern history.

ArcelorMittal said its withdrawal from Kazakhstan cost the company $2.4 billion.

“Performance in 2023 was severely impacted by the tragic Kostenko mine accident,” the company said in its earnings statement.

ArcelorMittal has commissioned an independent, company-wide safety audit of its operations in the wake of the mining disaster.

The aim of the exercise is “to identify gaps and strengthen safety actions, processes and culture to help prevent serious accidents”, it said.

Key recommendations will be published in September, it added.

“Protecting employee health and wellbeing remains an overarching priority of the company,” the statement said.

ArcelorMittal chief executive Aditya Mittal said he was “determined” to ensure that the recommendations “will make us a safer and ultimately accident-free company”.

The Luxembourg-based group also took a $1.4-billion hit in Italy, where the government has moved to place a struggling steelworks under state supervision.

ArcelorMittal has offered to sell its majority stake or become a minority shareholder of the debt-laden plant, Acciaierie d’Italia, in the southern city of Taranto.

Italian Business Minister Adolfo Urso said Thursday that the state was ready to take over the plant but negotiations with ArcelorMittal were continuing.

The talks underway “could lead to a solution, which in any case must guarantee the relaunch of activity, employment and the ecological re-conversion of a steel plant that we consider to be strategic,” Urso said.

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