Steel Industry: AMSA delaying the inevitable will only cost more!

PRESS RELEASE

1 April 2025

STEEL INDUSTRY

AMSA 

DELAYING THE INEVITABLE WILL ONLY COST MORE!

Yesterday, on 31 March 2025, AMSA CEO, Kobus Verster, published a memo in which he confirms that the closure of AMSA’s long steel business, which was announced in February this year, will be deferred by an initial period of at least 6 months.

In this memo, he makes worn-out statements, such as taking up “responsibility to ensure long term viability” and working “closely with the government to address the structural challenges our business has been facing”. One can almost hear the steel downstream rolling their eyes, because this letter promises nothing but more of the same we have witnessed in the past.

Through funding provided by the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and additional assistance from the government's Temporary Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) to support employee costs, AMSA has merely, again with Government bailouts, delayed the inevitable. Once again, the steel downstream and the South African taxpayer will bear the brunt of AMSA’s crippled attempt at crawling to its inevitable death.

AMSA has been and will continue to be a liability for the entire South African steel industry, and the Government’s continued attempts of carrying it to its end, to the detriment of the downstream, is insulting, to say the least.

ISSUED BY

Gerhard Papenfus

Chief Executive (NEASA)

MEDIA CONTACT

Chanté Dean

Media Liaison (NEASA)

072 618 5912

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