"Because of the capacity bottlenecks ThyssenKrupp Steel has so far been unable to share in this trend to the extent we would wish," Karl-Ulrich Koehler, head of the company's carbon steel division, told reporters ahead of this week's IISI annual steel congress held this year in Berlin.

The ThyssenKrupp Steel chief said sales and pretax profit reached record levels, which were not specified, in the past fiscal year to end-September. They totaled 10.75 billion euros and 1.42 billion, respectively, in 2005/06.

He aims to raise annual sales of premium carbon flat steel to 20-25 million tonnes in the medium term through the additional production of 5 million tonnes of semi-finished slabs in its Brazil plant, due to go on stream in March 2009, and through purchasing further slabs from third parties. Output was 13.8 million in the year to end-September 2006.

"We are also considering expanding production capacity in Brazil further (to reach the 25 million tonne target)," he said, should the company's organic growth strategy prove successful.

He expects the premium carbon flat market to grow by well over 6 percent by 2015, outpacing the below 4 percent rise in demand for carbon flat steel products overall.

Koehler's colleague Juergen Fechter, who runs ThyssenKrupp Stainless, gave a more cautious outlook for the coming months.

"The (2007/08) fiscal year ahead of us will be a year of transition for us -- as regards both the market environment and the realization of many of our investments," Fechter told a news conference.

The head of Stainless cited two main threats for his business: the unpredictable development in nickel prices and the "massive" impact from imports of stainless flat products into Europe, mainly from China.

"For this reason the European stainless producers now plan to move against imports from China. The steel association EUROFER is therefore preparing to file an anti-dumping complaint with the European Commission," he said.

Nonetheless, Fechter was optimistic that new orders had finally reached their trough with a clear improvement seen in August and September, meaning the division should bottom out in the current fiscal first quarter to end-December.

ThyssenKrupp Chief Executive Ekkehard Schulz meanwhile reaffirmed the company's forecast for 2006/07 sales of over 50 billion euros and pretax profit of around 3.6 billion excluding major one-off items of 400 million ahead of the release of group results on Dec. 4. He also stuck to its ambitious mid- and long-term targets.

Source: Reuters News