Riding the Storm: Ethiopian Steel’s Resilient Year

The winds of change don’t always come as a soft breeze. Sometimes, they come as a storm, uprooting the old, scattering the familiar, forcing reinvention. That was 2024 for us. A year of navigating headwinds, bracing for impact, and positioning Ethiopian Steel for the inevitable tailwinds ahead.

Our strategy was simple in its complexity: Mitigate Risk, Sustain Operations at the leanest yet most profitable level, and when the tide turned, be Ready to Ride the Wave.

The forex crunch was brutal in the first half of the year. We dug deep, leveraging every banking relationship, every financial muscle, to extract maximum forex at minimum cost. Bankers, powerful stakeholders in any economy, became our lifeline, ensuring the raw materials kept coming and dividends remained equitable. Then came Ethiopia’s mid-year economic shake-up. A complete shift from a controlled forex market to a fully market-driven one.

The impact? Immediate. Brutal. Raw material costs skyrocketed by more than 2.2 times, and with inflation tightening its grip, passing on the burden to customers was not an option. The game had changed, and so had the rules.

Our pivot was swift. We moved from margin-driven profitability to volume-driven survival. The new strategy? Build up volumes, secure raw materials, re-establish our presence in every market segment. The disruption hit hard, and yes, we braced for things to get worse before they got better. But resilience isn’t about avoiding the storm, it’s about navigating through it.

By the year’s close, we had emerged with a positive bottom line, a healthy stock position, and a foundation strong enough to capitalise on 2025’s resurgence. Our success was rooted in relationships—bankers, suppliers, and an agile, homegrown team that had digitalised operations, cleaned up legal cases, and adapted at every turn.

In business, today’s solution can be tomorrow’s problem. First-aid fixes don’t heal deep-rooted challenges. The work ahead is about creating organic, sustained demand, rebuilding lost ground, expanding reach, and positioning Ethiopian Steel for not just recovery, but dominance.

Our Culture Change program has improved the way people Work, Communicate, and Collaborate. What gets measured gets done! ESPLC has cocreated ground rules/behaviors which are called “My Commitments”.

• I will always work in ABCD mode: Above and Beyond the Call of Duty
• I commit to working with 0UfE: Zero unforced errors.
• I embrace an Early Alert attitude BNREIGN:bad news received early is good news.
• At ESPLC it’s all about R&R: Rituals and Rhythm
• I commit to P2E: Plan to Execute such that we achieve A-OTIF: Accurate – On Time in Full
• I commit to WWoR: Work Without Reminders, Always
• Around Here, we play in FTR: First Time Right Mode
• I Love AiDi: AI and Digital
• CPMS: Customer Pays my Salary

DD:Discipline Delivers great Cx: Customer Experience.

The storm may not be over, but we are ready. And when the