CEO Lecture #4: Karl Ulrich Köhler

On 30 May KIVI NIRIA Students Delft hosted the last of the CEO lectures of this college year. Due to the beautiful weather there may noty have been as many participants as we expected, however, it was a very interesting lecture.

Dr Köhler studied metallurgy at Clausthal University of Technology, where he gained his doctorate in 1988.  In 2005 he was awarded an honorary professorship in flat steel product technology by Freiberg University.  Dr Köhler is a former member of the executive committee of the World Steel Association and Vice Chairman of VDEh, the German Iron and Steel Institute.

During his 30-year steel industry career he worked at the companies that today comprise ThyssenKrupp Steel, where he was  Chairman of the Executive Board and Member of the Board of the parent company, ThyssenKrupp AG.  Until October 2009 he was President of Eurofer, the European steelmaking federation. And since 1 Ferbuary 2010 he joined Tata Steel Europe as Chief Operating Officer.

He has a wealth of knowledge and experience of steelmaking in Europe, as well as of the European steel supply chain and customer base and was able to introduce us to the world of steel and leadership.

Nowadays Karl-Ulrich Köhler visit India, the mother country of Tata Steel, around once a week. Karl-Ulrich Köhler told us that there is always a risk that all the producing companies will move to development countries because of the low salaries but this depends on the governments of the countries and Europe, for example in Great Britain, there are hardly any technical companies left because they wanted to become a financial centre of Europe. (before the financial crisis)

KIVI NIRIA's Magazine De Ingenieur featured an article on his career in edition 13. Click here to read the article (Dutch language only).