The Mechel plant, affected by the cutting of the gas supply

The employees of Mechel Târgovişte will no longer be able to continue their work in January because of the problems with the delivery of gas, thus approximately 3.000 metallurgists will be staying home, receiving only 75% of their wage.

The Russian owned Mechel Târgovişte was mentioned by the Minister of the Economy, Adriean Videanu, as being one of the companies whose operation will not resume because of the Russian gas crisis.

""Since December 20th, last year, we have gone into unemployment and we had scheduled the resumption of the activity in January, starting with the steel works, the rolling mills and the rest of the sections at the end of the month, starting January 24th", added Mihai Toma, leader of the Mechel union, quoted by Agerpres. Mr. Toma also added: "Now that the announcement of the Minister of the Economy that gas will no longer be delivered to certain companies, including Mechel, I don"t know if we can stick to this schedule. The management of the company has not notified us of anything, we are going to ask for their opinion. We would be happy if we could resume our operation as soon as possible, because only getting 75% of our wages is affecting us"".

Mr. Toma says the reasons for the suspension of production are two-fold. The economic crisis, led last year to a shrinking of orders, as we now even have unsold inventory, and now this gas crisis is hurting our metallurgic operations.

""Metallurgy has a high consumption of gas. For instance, for one ton of end product we need to consume 100 cubic meters of gas. Normally, the production at Mechel is approximately 40.000 tons a month, thus the gas consumption is substantial"", the Mechel Union leader further added.

Toma has further stated that, given the circumstances, he doesn"t even know for sure if operation will resume on January 24th, and he hopes for a new schedule to be made public soon.

Given its production area, Mechel Târgovişte is the only Romanian producer of steel for tools, quick steel, electrotechnical tape and has a large inventory for export, in particular special steel.

The plant was acquired in 2002 by the Swiss Company Conares Trading, which later became the operator of the Russian metallurgic group Mechel.

The main shareholders of Mechel Târgovişte are Mechel International Holdings AG, which holds 86,60% of the share capital and SIF Oltenia (SIF5), with a 8,92% stake. Also, 4,05% of the company"s shares are held by the Authority for State Assets Recovery (AVAS).