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Tata Steel Netherlands

Coordinates: 52°28′42″N 4°35′32″E / 52.47839°N 4.59212°E / 52.47839; 4.59212
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52°28′42″N 4°35′32″E / 52.47839°N 4.59212°E / 52.47839; 4.59212

Koninklijke Nederlandsche Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken N.V.
Founded1918
Defunct1999
SuccessorCorus Edit this on Wikidata
Headquarters
IJmuiden
,
Netherlands
IJmuiden blast furnaces.

Koninklijke Hoogovens (English: Royal Blast Furnaces)[note 1] was a Dutch steel producer founded in 1918 based in IJmuiden. In 1999, the company merged with British Steel to create Corus Group steel company. In 2007, Corus Group was purchased by India-based Tata Steel.

History

On April 19, 1917, H.J.E. Wenckebach, Geldolph Adriaan Kessler and others proposed to set up a steel plant in the Netherlands with a purpose to reduce Dutch industry's dependence on imports. A Founding Committee for the Dutch Blast Furnace, Steel and Rolling Works was formed on May 31, 1917, to raise the funds. Once the funds had been raised, the company was founded as Koninklijke Nederlandsche Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken N.V. (Royal Dutch Blast Furnaces and Steel Factories) in The Hague on September 20, 1918. The seed capital was provided by the city of Amsterdam, the government of the Netherlands, various private investors and Dutch companies. To provide easy access to ports, the plant was located at IJmuiden, a city on the North Sea coast at the mouth of and created by the diggers of the North Sea Canal, which had been created to accommodate the deeper drafts of steam-powered ships traveling to the port of Amsterdam.

Labour relations at the plant were usually good; during the first two decades of the enterprises existence the organisational structure was relatively simple, with limited hierarchies, there were limited attempts at a benevolent social policy by the plant's management. Psychological testing of potential workers was gradually introduced, first for skilled workers, and after WWII for unskilled workers. Vocational training was slowly introduced after 1938.[1] Post war there was no major industrial action until 1973 when 2300 workers went on strike at the Ijmuiden plant. During the Steel crisis there were no strikes, despite significant lay-offs.[2]

In the late 1990s two blast furnaces were purchased by the Indonesian steel group Gunawan Steel Group and dismantled and shipped to its development in Malaysia; Gunawan Iron and Steel. The dismantling work was carried out by a chinese contractor which was found to be paying its 120 chinese workers less than the dutch minimum wage, with poor safety conditions, with 14 accidents resulting in 2 fatalities due to falls from height. The chinese contractor was fined for breaches of safety practice, and made to improve working conditions, as well as retrospectively paying its workers 15,000 Guilders.[3]

In June 1999 British Steel and Hoogovens announced that they were to merge, with Hoogovens forming 38.3% of the new group; the new company provisionally title 'BSKH' was then the third largest in the world, with sales of £9.4 billion.[4] The name "Corus" for the new entity was announced in September 1999,[5] The merger was approved by the European Commission in July,[6] on 6 October 1999 the two companies were merged.[7]

The merger has also been characterised as a takeover by British Steel;[2] BS, which exported a third of its output to Europe was vulnerable to a strong pound, and the merger with Hoogovens could insulate it to some extent from such currency fluctuations,[8]

In 2007 Tata Steel acquired Corus and subsequently renamed it Tata Steel Europe.

References

  1. ^ Staal en arbeid - Periode 1924-1955, "Summary", pp.370-
  2. ^ a b Michael Whittall; Herman Knudsen; Fred Huijgen, eds. (2007), Towards a European labour identity: the case of the European Work Council, Routledge, "Historical background", pp.41-43
  3. ^ Sources:
  4. ^ "British Steel merges with Dutch rival", news.bbc.co.uk, BBC, 7 Jun 1999
  5. ^ "Newly merged British Steel-Hoogovens group to be named Corus", nl.newsbank.com, Associated Press Archive, 30 Sep 1999
  6. ^ "Commission approves merger between British Steel (UK) and Hoogovens (Netherlands)", europa.eu, European Union, 19 Jul 1999
  7. ^ History of Koninklijke Hoogovens, (Corus), The 1990s
  8. ^ Michael Harrison (3 Jun 1999), British Steel poised for pounds 1bn takeover

Sources

Notes

  1. ^ "Hoogoven" (plural "hoogovens") is Dutch for blast furnace.
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