Chairman Michel Wurth, economy minister Franz Fayot, SMS Group chairman Edwin Eichler and outgoing Paul Wurth Luxembourg CEO Georges Rassel pictured at a official signing event for the sale of the government’s shares in the company in April 2021. Library photo: Matic Zorman / Maison Moderne

Chairman Michel Wurth, economy minister Franz Fayot, SMS Group chairman Edwin Eichler and outgoing Paul Wurth Luxembourg CEO Georges Rassel pictured at a official signing event for the sale of the government’s shares in the company in April 2021. Library photo: Matic Zorman / Maison Moderne

Economy minister Franz Fayot on Tuesday sought to reassure members of parliament that steel industry company Paul Wurth would remain in the grand duchy after the ousting of its Luxembourg CEO.

Paul Wurth in 2021 was fully taken over by German majority shareholder SMS Group, with plans for the steel industry supplier’s Luxembourg site to become a centre of excellence for green steel.

As part of the deal, in which SMS acquired a 40.8% share owned by the government, the company committed itself to in Luxembourg as well as upholding essential activities and the governance structure.

“It’s not up to me to comment on management decisions of SMS,” said (LSAP) during a plenary session in parliament on 17 January.

SMS on 13 January had announced that the CEO of Paul Wurth in Luxembourg, , had been offered another job within the group. He is being replaced with André Schneider. Previously vice-president of SMS Group in Germany, Schneider’s most recent posting was in Moscow as the CEO of CIS-region countries, which include Russia and Ukraine but also Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus, among others.

“I understand the worry,” Fayot commented about fears that the ouster of the Luxembourg CEO would come with a shift in strategy away from the Paul Wurth site in the grand duchy. “I know this is a company with a big history that is connected to the history of the Luxembourg steel industry.”

Review due

SMS Group last week told Delano’s sister publication Paperjam that the decision or other changes.

Upon the takeover over the Luxembourg government’s shares, SMS Group said it wanted to and steel recycling in Luxembourg as well as reinforcing metallurgy and hydrogen technology innovation.

In 2021, Paul Wurth signed an agreement with the University of Luxembourg to help fund a professorship dedicated to energy process engineering, including research on hydrogen and carbon neutral industrial processing.

“What’s important is that Paul Wurth as a location in Luxembourg, as a centre of expertise for green steel, is upheld and expanded,” Fayot said, adding that SMS’s chairman of the board, Edwin Eichler, had “explicitly affirmed this” in a phone call.

Eichler and the new Paul Wurth CEO in Luxembourg, Schneider, are due to meet with government representatives to discuss progress made on these plans as part of a review agreed during the share sale in 2021.

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