ZURICH (Reuters – Voestalpine, an Austrian specialty steelmaker, said that it is currently in talks with Texas to buy a majority of its Texas facility.

The Austrian company said that voestalpine had been performing an open-ended market analysis to stabilize its business model at the Corpus Christi plant. “As a consequence of this examination, voestalpine currently is in negotiations to sale 80% of its shares at voestalpine Texas.”

The company said talks are at an advanced stage but did not disclose a possible sale price.

Voestalpine plans to invest in Corpus Christi a state of the art plant for 550 million Euros in 2013.

Corpus Christi’s $1 billion facility opened October 2016 with a capacity of 2,000,000 tonnes annually of hot briquetted or sponge iron. This pre-material is used in steel production.

However, setbacks have since occurred at the plant, which has been affected by delays and cost overruns of more than one billion dollars. Additionally, there is a very difficult market place due to COVID-19.

Robert Ottel Chief Financial Officer stated that the Texas operation was worth 448 million Euros after writing-offs.

Voestalpine reported a 163 million euro impairment loss on its Texas operations in 2020-21. This was due to the Texas plant being faced with “sharply higher” demand.

However, Texas’s plant enjoyed “good demand” for steel in North America during the three-quarters of the 2021-22 reporting period, as the Austrian firm stated in February. It also said that it expects full year earnings to be at the top end of its forecast.