In announcing its year-end fiscal 2020 earnings, the company said that in light of delivery bottlenecks resulting from the novel coronavirus virus, it now expects to complete the project in second half of 2021. 

The highly automated, electric arc furnace-based plant is being built to produce special steel for the aerospace, oil and gas, and mechanical engineering sectors. The plant is expected to cost EUR350 million and will have a capacity of 205,000 metric tons annually. 

The company also said it is curtailing capital investments this year and will increasingly shift its focus to optimizing the high-tech plants it has recently put into operation.

Those plants include its pilot hydrogen electrolysis plant at its facility in Linz, Austria, and its new continuous casting plant in Donawitz, Austria.

“voestalpine’s focus in the business year 2020/21 will be on measures aimed at stabilizing earnings, such as consistent cost and working capital management as well as cash flow generation,” said voestalpine chief executive Herbert Eibensteiner.