Liberty Steel fires blast furnace in Romania but remains under mounting debt

Romania's sole flat steel producer and among the few still operational in Europe, Liberty Galati (part of GFG Alliance's Liberty Steel Group), announced it resumed activity on June 4 after idling for an entire year amid adverse market conditions. Over the past year and a half, the company received EUR 292 million in government-guaranteed loans from state-owned bank Eximbank but failed to reach break-even production amid a weak market last year.

The company ties its hope for settling its mounting debts to the state's stimulus for the defense industry. Its debt surpassed EUR 500 million in May 2025 and has been under pre-insolvency procedure since March 5. The EUR 1 billion Greensteel decarbonisation investment plan announced in 2021 with the aim of carbon-neutral operations by 2030 was put on hold, just like its plan to decommission the furnace blast at the end of 2026.