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Polish steel firm Impexmetal's new head Jacek Krawiec has been given until 2000 to carry out a major restructuring and refocusing at Impexmetal. Krawiec took over in summer 1998 after former managing director Edward Wojtulewicz was ousted. The management changes were due to the concern of Japanese bank Nomura, which acquired a 15% stake in Impexmetal in spring 1998. Nomura was worried that Impexmetal was being poorly managed. Krawiec is now cutting costs, reorganizing the firm's trading functions, shutting its foreign subsidiaries and refocusing on steel, copper and aluminium.

The Trepca smelting complex in Kosovo is one of the 'jewels in the crown' of Serbia's privatization programme, but there is great secrecy surrounding Trepca and its five lead-zinc mines. The state-owned complex's general manager, Novak Bijelic, says the complex is operating at full capacity. However, Byrhan Kavaja, a former general manager at the Stari Trg mine, says the mine now has only 730 employees and produces less than half the 850,000 t of ore a year it produced in his time. Greek firm Mytilineos claims to have revived the complex via a $517 million contract it signed in 1996.

The failure of the European zinc industry to return to profitability is due largely by wrong decisions which have then been repeated. The losses in the industry are partly due to the adverse business cycle and the unexpected growth in metal supplies from the former eastern bloc. However, low profitability has been a problem for the European zinc industry for decades. European zinc producers have a comparative cost-disadvantage, and seek to remedy this by boosting capacity in order to spread fixed costs. However this merely leads to oversupply and therefore low prices.