ArcelorMittal sees no halt to growth

FRANKFUR: The world's biggest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal, sees no slowing of global growth in the steel industry, chief executive Lakshmi Mittal said on Wednesday in an interview.

"I do not see the steel industry losing speed, quite the contrary," Mittal told the newspaper Die Welt, adding that according to forecasts, the industry would grow worldwide by three to five per cent in the next 10 years.

He said ArcelorMittal was gearing its capacity planning closer to the lower end of that forecast.

ArcelorMittal planned to increase annual production capacity to 130 million tonnes until 2012, a 20 per cent increase over 2006.

Mittal said the steel conglomerate was currently producing 47 per cent of the iron ore it used to make steel, a ratio it planned to increase to 75 per cent.

He also said the company had reached 80 per cent of the $1.6 billion (1.09 billion euros) in cost savings it expected to generate from the merger of Arcelor and Mittal.