Production Models at Altos Hornos Zapla: From State Expansion to Private-Sector Retrenchment

Abstract

This paper is situated within the general framework of research linked to business and industrial history, and also within the context of the research project “Railway Dismantling and Steel-Industry Privatization: Socioeconomic Consequences, Social Representations, and Political Identities. The Cases of the General Belgrano Railway and Altos Hornos Zapla in the 1990s in Jujuy, Argentina”.

Following the aforementioned lines of research, this article seeks to determine, on the basis of official sources—such as minutes of the DGFM board of directors and technical reports produced by the company—magazines published by social and cultural associations, and various issues of the commercial press, the main characteristics of the historical development of AHZ. It focuses attention on its qualitative and quantitative productive capacities and on the impact that its privatization generated on local employment.

The results obtained are linked to two specific periods in the development of AHZ. The first stage, from its beginnings until the 1980s, involved the consolidation of an integrated steel-production model and, at the same time, the implementation of a productive model based on an expansionary and integration-oriented policy.

During a second stage, beginning in the mid-1980s, the expansionary trend receded and, subsequently, in the 1990s, AHZ was privatized. The removal of AHZ from state control modified both its productive system and its impact on local employment and on the provincial economy.