Total sales of Duferco Distribution Companies reached a new record level of 4.8 million tons, although this result has been achieved thanks to the very substantial increments in EU, whereas the USA market lost ground compared with previous year.


Main contributors to such increase have been Germany and Duferco Special Steels. With total number of employees remaining basically unchanged, Duferco Distribution Europe have improved their tonnage output / employee by 10% on a yearly basis, with number of invoiced transactions up by 20%.

The company is constantly monitoring its performance not only on tonnage and turnover but by also benchmarking it in comparison to the best practices of competitors to make sure that our unit costs and productivity are always competitive.

We are pleased to say that this has been largely the case, also thanks to our business model and we consider it to be an important value contribution for our own mills and business partners.

During Fiscal year 2007 Duferco Transformation Europe has increased its market share with large users in the automotive, construction and engineering sectors very much thanks to the commercial and technical support of our captive mills, mainly Duferco La Louvière and
Clabecq.

In this way Duferco Transformation Europe is reinforcing its function of intermediary between our production units and our customers and assures the image and reputation of the JV Duferco - NLMK.

During 2008 we expect to complete the marketing organization for our captive mills and for those managed by our partners, and to add some new facilities to better serve our customer base.

Distribution in Fiscal Year 2007