Prime Minister Robert Fico and Minister of Environment Peter Ziga visiting U. S. Steel Kosice

On Saturday March 1, 2014 Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico together with Minister of Environment Peter Ziga visited U. S. Steel Kosice where they met with the company President George F. Babcoke, VP External Affairs, Administration and Business Development Miroslav Kiralvarga and General Counsel C. James Bond. Theme of the joint discussion was the issue of European industry competitiveness and European energy policy to be discussed by EU leaders during upcoming summit in Brussels to be held in late March.
"In Brussels, where EU summit will be held, we will discuss a serious issue, namely EU climate protection strategy by year 2030. On behalf of Slovak government we have stated several times in past we cannot agree with the goals EC proposes in the document. We cannot agree with a goal calling for 40 percent reduction of greenhouse gases and proposes renewable source electricity production on the level of 27 percent. We insist that there must be a market with so called free emission quotas especially for companies such as USSK so we can compete in the very tough environment", said Prime minister during press conference after the meeting. Theme of the discussions with U. S. Steel Kosice representatives were, he said, also electricity prices for industry. Robert Fico informed about short term goals Slovak government has in this area, as well as about longer term visions.

Best Managers of 2013 in the competition focused on hazard identification and risk assesment

On Thursday, February 27 fifty-seven managers - heads of shops, their deputies, coordinators and foremen, have received awards for the best results in the area of risk elimination in 2013 from the U. S. Steel Kosice President George GF. Babcoke, VP Human Resources Martin Pitorak, GM Safety, Hygiene and REACH Mark T. Salo and deputy GM Safety and Hygiene Róbert Meitner. In total 578 managers took part in the second year of the competition aimed at identification of hazards and risk assessment, form all U. S. Steel Kosice division as well as from subsidiary companies OBAL-SERVIS, RMS and Labortest, who jointly assessed and eliminated last year almost 6 thousand hazards. Sixteen best Risk Elimination projects were selected for the corporation-wide competition.

We welcomed guests from APEAL and MPE

On Wednesday February 19 General Secretary of the Association of European Producers of Steel Packaging Alexander Mohr and PR Director Metal Packaging - organization associating of European metal packaging producers, Joris Nachtergaele visited U. S. Steel Kosice. Two guests attended informal meeting with U. S. Steel Kosice VP Commercial Christian Korn, who serves also as President of APEAL and together with U. S. Steel Kosice Director Public Relations Jan Baca discussed current MPE activities and potential areas of cooperation and communication in EU with a goal to present steel as top ecological material.