For scrap processors, claims by steel mills about “a crisis situation with respect to steel scrap” amount to a recycling of memories from 2004 and, for old-timers, from 1979 and 1973.
Roller-coaster pricing of raw materials has drawn attention to how some governments might try to keep resources from leaving their territory. Nucor Corp., with steel scrap as its chief input, wants to make sure that such action is included in Washington’s agenda on trade distortions.
Countries that use export taxes to hoard raw materials are disruptive to international trade, and the consequences worsen when a government can adjust them easily, reacting to short-term market conditions, one analyst said.
The battle for market share continues to rage in the automotive arena. But smaller vehicles might have a bigger, near-term impact on metal producers than new alternative power trains, industry insiders suggest.
When it comes to hybrid cars and trucks, new technologies don’t always mean a drastic change in the metals used to make them, according to auto industry insiders. While some analysts and metal industry partisans see a revolution in the making, the auto industry’s response might be: not so fast.
Remember the old ad slogan, “Where’s the beef?” The question of tomorrow in a more health-conscious environment might well be, “How much fat can you cut?”
Soaring fuel costs have left automakers reeling, with the impact on their bottom lines forcing many to slash jobs, close some plants and retool others to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. The need to economize is driving a revolution of sorts: the rise of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).
As original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) race to develop plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), there also is a pursuit for new battery technologies that will carry the vehicles further, and faster on a single charge.
The plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) market stands poised to take off, but don’t expect it to be an overnight sensation, according to analysts following developments in the industry.
The policy differences between presidential nominees Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.) are sharply drawn in many areas, but nowhere are they starker than in the area of international trade.
Not content with just the tip of the iceberg, Canada’s ruling Conservative Party has made a Canadian $100-million ($94-million) commitment to map mineral and energy resources in the rich but largely untapped Arctic region and reassert its sovereignty in the process.
Scrap dealers and many of the companies that supply them with steel clips from their stamping presses re-learned an old lesson a month or two back. Simply stated, the ferrous scrap market has a downside as well as an upside, that prices can plunge as well as soar.
With the exception of California, the states enacting mandatory recycling of computer monitors and televisions have chosen to make manufacturers pay the bills. But the details vary substantially—Washington state is not Oregon is not Maine. Several electronics manufacturers have launched nationwide recycling programs for their own branded goods. The result has been a patchwork.
Until Wabash Alloys LLC disappeared last year into a larger company, acquired by Aleris International Inc., Beachwood, Ohio, the smelter chain’s purchasing chief was a key player in U.S. aluminum scrap.
To be competitive in today’s global marketplace, the steel industry must have a clear understanding of current market trends and a vision for those issues that will define future market demand.
The iron ore index developed by Metal Bulletin (MB), a sister publication of AMM, is an accurate representation of the seaborne merchant market for sinter fines delivered to China.
Richard L. Sandor doesn’t lack ambition. While U.S. financial exchanges are pushing into new areas like steel futures, often in the face of industry resistance, the founder of the world’s first exchange to trade climate products clearly thinks the sky’s the limit.
Just over a year ago, German-born Klaus Kleinfeld joined the big aluminum producer’s executive ranks and things haven’t been the same since. Beneath all the high energy and enthusiasm, however, the former Siemens exec is committed to staying the strategic course.
Rumors have long swirled that Alcoa Inc. could be a takeover target, but the Pittsburgh-based aluminum company might just have a trump card in Pennsylvania’s onerous anti-takeover laws.
After years of scouting the globe for new smelter locations, Rio Tinto Alcan’s Dick Evans has turned his attention to the aluminum maker’s home turf and its captive, cost-competitive hydroelectric power. The net result is a $6-billion-plus plan to up output at three Canadian facilities and longing looks of competitors-cum-predators eyeing ways to make the assets their own.
Few subjects stir as much ire among steel consumers as scrap surcharges, the cost pass-along mechanism that has been blamed for a litany of evils, including defanging the one-time tooth-and-nail bargaining between scrap sellers and buyers. Have the mills gone soft? And with scrap prices plummeting, will surcharges linked to prime grades turn the tables on electric-furnace mills?
Surcharges are distinct from steel base prices, which normally aren’t affected by month-to-month scrap price changes, although a rise in steel demand and ferrous scrap prices could put upward pressure on both.
When Vicente Wright officially took over as president and chief executive officer of California Steel Industries Inc. (CSI) on July 1, he could hardly be called a newcomer. Not only had he served as CSI’s chief executive for more than a year in 2003 and 2004, but he played an active role in the set of deals that helped launch the slab converter in 1984 from the rump of the former Kaiser Steel Corp.
The letters stand for public-private partnerships, a new wrinkle in project funding that could pan out big for rod and wire mills waiting for the infrastructure market to finally hit the road.
Road, rail, on the river or deep water, soaring fuel prices, capacity constraints, and runaway freight rates have made moving metal a costly exercise in frustration.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain proved effective in firing up their voting base in the run-up to the November elections.
It appears that political momentum is building for a federal government loan to General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC on terms far more favorable than they could realize in the marketplace. The numbers circulating in Washington suggest $400 billion at 4 percent would be just about right to prop up the struggling portion of the U.S. auto industry.
When a bubble bursts, it doesn’t take long for the gas to escape.
Every month American Metal Market takes a statistical look inside the marketplace.
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