World News for Students of English

29-09-2022 15:00

Aperam is a Belgian-French company which produces steel. Like many other steel producers, the company had big problems in recent months.

The prices of electricity and gas grew so much that last month, Aperam spent the same amount of money energy as it spent in the whole year. The company had to switch off some of its furnaces, and it lowered production by 50%. More than a thousand people could lose their jobs, and the situation is similar in other companies, too.

The EU wants to get some money back from energy companies, but nobody knows how much money will get to producers. Some experts already worry that some industries could end in Europe. This change would be bad for the companies and also for the environment. Steel producers in Asia make cheaper steel, but they produce a lot more emissions.

Difficult words: steel (a hard grey metal to make things like buildings and structures), furnace (a structure to heat metal), industry (companies and their activities in a specific business).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.