ArcelorMittal Costa Rica

The business case

Access to adequate shelter is vital to every human being, yet over 1.1 billion people areliving in inadequate housing conditions. While the need for housing is clear, findingaffordable solutions is not so clear. In 2008, soon after the Tecucel River in Romaniaflooded and destroyed more than 300 homes, ...the ArcelorMittal Foundation formed aglobal partnership with Habitat for Humanity to improve affected families’ lives. Inpartnership with Habitat for Humanity, ArcelorMittal adapted a Habitat for Humanityhouse design into a light steel frame housing solution that is affordable, durable andenvironmentally friendly and could also be transferrable to other countries around theworld – enabling ArcelorMittal to enter into the low-cost housing construction market. http://www.wbcsd.org/DocRoot/5UF7qn0onPFjBYHhRiFB/ArcelorMittalHabitatforHumanityfullcaseFINAL.pdfRead More

The sole Spanish member of our Group Management Board, Gonzalo Urquijo is responsible for Long, Stainless and Tubular Products among others, as well as for Corporate Responsibility. In this interview, he shares his priorities (“the biggest challenge that we have is in terms of people”) and hopes (“we will see growth in... steel in the future”), and tells us that this crisis may be providing us with an opportunity to become a true leader…

How has the current economic situation impacted your area of responsibility?

Clearly this economic downturn has affected the Company as a whole, and Long, Stainless and Tubular have not been an exception. Who are our customers? Basically construction, automotive, white goods (stainless)… and all of them have been heavily impacted by the economic situation.

In Q4 2008, Q1 and Q2 our factories have been running at 50% capacity, while one year before they were able to run at 90% or even higher.

What about Corporate Responsibility?

I’m glad you ask this question because this is one of the only areas which has not been impacted: we are an institution at the end the day, so it is not a question of an economic downturn or upturn. The Company is here to stay so we continue to work very hard in all our CR activities.

Please mention the top measures taken in your area to respond to the economic situation.


The 1st one is Health and Safety. Now many of our plants have been temporarily idled, or are working in a ‘stop and go’ mode. Safety is our number 1 and 2 priority, and we have continued working in order to have no safety incidents during this difficult working mode.


The 2nd one is cost. It’s very difficult to reduce fixed cost by 50% in 6 months, but that has been our target and we’ve come very close to it: wherever there was a euro a dollar to save, we were there: less travelling, no consultants, we’ve reduced subcontractors…









The 3rd one is cash. We’ve worked hard in order to generate cash to reduce the debt of the Group. We have reduced working capital requirements and cut our CAPEX (capital expenditures), except in the fields of safety and environment and where we had legal requirements. All CAPEX related to growth have been postponed – I insist postponed: we will come back and the most profitable projects will be carried out in the future


What key challenges do you foresee in the coming months?



The biggest challenge that we have is in terms of people. Our people are the most important and essential asset we have at ArcelorMittal, and going forward, that’s where we need to focus. Why? Because we all have lived very hard months, which have required a lot of sacrifices for all of us. In the end you have to keep people motivated, you have to keep the same motivation you had when you started, the same that we had 1 year ago when we were producing at 90%


2nd is customers: customers have suffered as much as we have: they also had to reduce their stock, their balance sheet, their debt… We have to continue working very closely with our customers to be their favourite supplier


We have started to see the signs of a slight market upturn. Moving forward we have to be ready to catch all arising opportunities.


Finally, I hope we can see our results going up in the end this also means increasing prices





Do you have a final message that you would like to share with ArcelorMittal people in these challenging times?

I think we are overcoming this crisis, and this sector and this Company will come out much stronger. Automotive, construction… all the sectors that consume steel, will continue consuming today and tomorrow. So the steel market will continue being there, it will be a growing market through emerging economies; we will see growth in steel in the future.

But above all, this Company has to come out better from this crisis. We are already a much better company today: look at the way we have faced this crisis, how fast we have reacted! All of us ArcelorMittal employees after this are going to come out much more united, closer, in order to make a much better company and be the leader - not only in terms of tonnes, but for all our stakeholders: workers, suppliers, customers and communities. Read More