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Steel and Stainless Steel Industries

Retaining Posco in India-a challenge for Centre? – by Ashok B Sharma (The Echo of India -June 5, 2015)

http://echoofindia.com/

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hopes for mobilising foreign direct investments (FDIs) for bolstering growth and job creation may meet with the first casualty if the South Korean steel major POSCO takes a firm stand on withdrawing from its proposed project in Odisha. The main reason for this sorry episode would be not providing mining lease on out-of-turn basis in the spirit of the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement signed between the two countries way in 1996.

South Korean investments in India surged after signing of this agreement and touched $ 3.8 billion by December 2014. South Korean companies forayed into India much before the Make in India programme was officially launched by PM Modi. South Korean companies sources large parts of local contentment, thereby facilitating indigenisation.

From its manufacturing base in Chennai, Hyundai Motor India has exported about 2.2 million cars to 123 countries in five continents. Its success story is that with a total investment of $2.7 billion, its yearly turnover is about $5 billion and it has created about 1,50,000 direct and indirect employment including dealers and vendors.

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Up North Report: Inside North America’s biggest construction project – by Aaron Brown (Minneapolis Star Tribune – May 25, 2015)

http://www.startribune.com/

Construction is accelerating at the long awaited $1.9 billion Essar Steel Minnesota mine near Nashwauk, while Essar now says it’s optimistic about producing direct reduced iron products here.

In a tour of the Northern Minnesota site on May 21 with Mitch Brunfelt, Essar’s assistant general counsel and director of government and public relations, I took pictures and observed progress at the site of the biggest construction project on the Mesabi Iron Range in a generation.

This is currently the largest greenfield construction project on the continent, and it’s hard to understate the sheer size, commontion, and labor involved. The site produces a steady drone, easily heard from my home eight miles away.

After years of starts and stops, Essar now says it is finally fully financed and has increased its contractor workforce at the site. About 400 workers were on site the day I visited. Brunfelt said they will soon see 600-800 workers on site each day as summer arrives in force.

Essar has officially amended its construction timeline to reflect the realities of the company’s progress. Brunfelt said Essar engineers are now eying production of taconite by late June or July of 2016.

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Indian PM breathes life into Posco’s stalled project – by Ajoy K Das (MiningWeekly.com – May 21, 2015)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – South Korean steel major Posco’s plans for securing iron-ore resources for its $12-billion Indian investments have been thrown a lifeline through the intervention of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The project, which has been hanging fire for over a decade, was given a nudge following the Prime Minister’s two-day Seoul summit with Korean President Park Geun-hye, followed by a meeting with Posco CEO Kwon Oh Joon earlier this week.

Senior officials in the Steel Ministry said that the Indian Prime Minister held a series of talks on bilateral economic issues with Korean political and business leaders, but Posco investments, almost on the verge of being scrapped, did not specifically figure during this visit.

This initially was considered a disappointment, as Posco’s plans to set up a 12-million-tonne-a-year steel plant in the eastern Indian port town of Paradip, in Odisha, linked to the Khandadhar iron-ore reserves, represented the single largest foreign direct investment in the country, the official said.

However, soon after his return, Modi was reported to have pushed for several initiatives aimed at getting the stalled project off the ground.

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Steel ‘dumping’ blamed for Iron Range layoffs – Jon Collins (Minnesota Public Radio – April 1, 2015)

http://www.mprnews.org/

Politicians and mining company officials are blaming unfair foreign competition for more than a thousand recent layoffs in the state’s iron ore industry.

U.S. Steel announced Tuesday that it would idle part of its taconite plant in Mountain Iron, Minn., starting on June 1. Earlier last month U.S. Steel announced plans to idle a plant in Keewatin, which will result in more than 400 layoffs. Magnetation also recently announced that it was closing an Iron Range plant and laying off more than 40 people.

The closing of plants and mills comes from a glut of steel supplies and the steady decline of prices over the last few months.

Following news of the most recent plant closing, Rep. Jason Metsa, DFL-Virginia, blamed the low prices on “foreign countries for dumping state-sibsidized steel on American shores.” U.S. Steel officials have also pointed to illegal trade practices by Chinese companies.

Dumping is a frowned upon international trade practice, said Tony Barrett, a professor of economics at the College of St. Scholastica. It’s when a company sells steel abroad for cheaper than the cost to produce it because they don’t need to make the same level of profits as American steel companies.

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India’s $18 Billion Mistake? – by Dhiraj Nayyar (Bloomberg News – April 1, 2015)

http://www.bloombergview.com/

A decade ago, Korean steelmaker Posco’s proposed $12 billion investment in the eastern Indian state of Odisha (then still known as Orissa) was hailed as the country’s biggest-ever foreign investment commitment, as well as a vote of confidence in India as a potential manufacturing power. Ten years later, Posco’s reported pullout is a PR debacle and a blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hopes to convince companies to “make in India.”

Worse, it’s the government’s success rather than its policy failures that appear to have driven out the steelmaker. On the heels of a lucrative auction of telecom spectrum, which garnered bids totaling a record $18 billion last week, the government is set to sell off iron ore and the rights to limestone mines by auction as well. Under the old regime, the state would have allocated these kinds of resources to industry at a nominal price. Now that the government is looking to maximize profits by putting them up for bids instead, Posco has apparently decided that the additional costs make the Odisha project unappealing.

The political logic of auctions is obvious. Under the previous Congress-led government, the opaque process of allocating resources to private companies quickly led to accusations of cronyism and corruption. Anger over the 2G spectrum scandal of 2008 and the coal scandal of 2009 played a huge role in Modi’s landslide victory last year.

Unfortunately, criticism has focused on the idea that the government gave away India’s resources too cheaply.

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Posco Said to Be Backing Away From $12 Billion India Project – by Abhishek Shanker (Bloomberg News – March 27, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

(Bloomberg) — Posco is backing away from a planned $12 billion steel complex in India, which has been stalled by local disputes and lease issues since it was proposed a decade ago, people familiar with the development said.

South Korea’s biggest steelmaker has tried to get back the money it gave to government agencies in the eastern state of Odisha to secure some of the land, and for railway connections, according to three people and company letters seen by Bloomberg. Six of 13 employees at Posco’s Indian unit overseeing the project have also “voluntarily” resigned, spokesman I.G. Lee said in a text message.

“Still, we are on and waiting for further progress,” Lee said about the proposed steel complex. He isn’t aware of any letter from Posco seeking a refund, Lee said.

Posco’s Odisha project, the nation’s biggest foreign investment, has failed to take off since 2005 because of opposition from local farmers and the failure to secure iron ore mining leases. The steelmaker was able to overcome local resistance and get the state to acquire about 2,700 acres (1,093 hectares) of land for the first phase.

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Mining analyst weighs in on sale of Cliffs’ Ring of Fire – CBC Sudbury Points North’s Jason Turnbull Interviews Mining Policy Analyst Stan Sudol (March 25, 2015)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury The mining policy analyst and owner/editor of www.republicofmining.com, Stan Sudol says the Noront Resources got a good deal in its purchase of Cliffs Natural Resources stake in the Ring of Fire. Click here: http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Ontario/Up+North/ID/2660705564/

Letter from: the blast furnaces of Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine’s decaying industrial heartland – by Alan Turgutoglu (Calvert Journal – February 19, 2015)

http://calvertjournal.com/

The Calvert Journal is a daily briefing on the culture and creativity of modern Russia.

Ugly cities are plentiful in Ukraine, but Kryvyi Rih, a city in central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, is uglier than most. Its skyline of towering pit heads and blast furnaces extends for 130 km across the horizon, following the line of the region’s iron ore deposits. The city has the odd distinction of being the longest city in Europe.

The statue of Lenin still looks proudly upon his labourers, even though many of the iron ore mines are now long closed. In a country where nobody minds the rashes from bathing in the polluted seas and rivers in summertime, this city is dirty enough to make people want to leave. What brought me here were the stories of former inhabitants who left and who told me that the pollution is so bad that houses, cars and even cats and dogs are constantly coated in red dust, a by­-product of the ore extraction process. Upon arrival I was welcomed by a cloud of smog unlike anything I’ve seen in Ukraine, rivalling that of some Chinese cities.

It’s worse in the evening, when the sky is covered with brownish­red clouds of smoke. The chemical smell is nauseating. “It’s probably because these plants function at lower capacity in the morning and afternoon, then go up to full capacity in the evening.

People are less likely to complain then,” Andrei, 28, tells me. He’s a foreman in a metallurgical plant at a full-­cycle combine, a complex which carries out the complete iron production process from the moment the ore is extracted from underground all the way to casting the metal bars which are then shipped across the country.

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South Korea’s POSCO faces another setback in India – by Krishna N. Das and Jatindra Dash (Reuters India – February 5, 2015)

http://in.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – South Korea’s POSCO (005490.KS) will have to bid for an iron ore licence to feed its planned $12 billion steel plant in India, a minister said, in a setback for the company that was expecting the government to allocate it a mine without any competition.

The project to be set up by the world’s sixth-largest steelmaker has been caught up in a regulatory maze for the past decade, but the company had waited in the hope of getting preferential access to iron ore in Odisha.

But steel and mines minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Thursday ruled out an exception to an executive order mandating auctions for all new mines. This will mean POSCO’s costs will likely rise if it does manage to win a mine.

“Even I’ll have to bid for a mine if I want one,” Tomar said, as the government looks to overhaul the past practice of handing over mines and reduce chances of corruption. The government’s decision, however, goes against the recommendation of Odisha to grant POSCO a mine without an auction.

“It was an international commitment and we had recommended on the basis of the request made by the (previous) central government,” Odisha’s steel and mines minister Prafulla Kumar Mallik told Reuters. “If POSCO will have to bid, it will be a setback for the project.”

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Saving American Industry by Disrupting It – by Pat Choate (Huffington Post – January 14, 2015)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/business/

The U.S. economy has lost more than a third of its industrial base over the past 20 years and with it more than six million good-paying jobs. This loss is the real cause of the rising economic inequality that now plagues our nation.

While most of the corporate CEOs who are facilitating this outsourcing of national wealth are indifferent to what is happening, there are a few old-fashioned, true capitalists who are not. One of those is Texas entrepreneur Rob Wendt. He is a man on a mission: He’s fighting to rebuild the American steel industry with American workers in America.

His is a lofty goal, to say the least. Once at the heart of the U.S. economy, the steel business now stands with the automobile industry as a stark symbol of American decline. Our nation led the world in steel production for decades — it was used to build the cars and appliances that fueled domestic job creation and economic growth over much of the 20th century — but U.S. producers have been in freefall since the recession of the 1970s.

At one time its biggest exporter, America is today the world’s number-one steel importer. We have been outrun by China, Europe, and Japan — and now India is hot on our heels.

Wendt wants to reverse that trend. To do so, he is using what the industry has lacked for nearly 100 years: truly disruptive technology. His startup, Origami Steel, has developed a patent-pending process that could radically change the ways in which steel is both made and sold.

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Success secrets of Francis H. Clergue [the visionary founder of Algoma Steel] – by David Helwig (Soo Today.com – November 13, 2014)

https://www.sootoday.com/

If you look carefully at the structural steel in the oldest of those magnificent Romanesque buildings at the Mill Square redevelopment, you’ll see Andrew Carnegie’s maker’s mark.

Francis Hector Clergue used the American robber baron’s Carnegie Steel in the initial buildings of his new pulp mill. Clergue, as every Saultite knows, was the lawyer from Bangor, Maine who came here in 1894 on behalf of a group of Philadelphia capitalists looking for investment opportunities.

He founded St. Marys Paper, what is now Essar Steel Algoma, and Algoma Central Railway, all in just eight years from 1895 to 1902. Other buildings at the St. Marys Paper/ Mill Square site were built with Clergue’s Algoma Steel after the first local ingot was cast in 1902.

Glen Martin sees a ton of significance and symbolism in Clergue’s switch to homegrown Algoma Steel. Martin is the hirsute Los Angeles-based Saultite who was the initial driving force behind the Sault Ste. Marie Solar Park before the project was acquired by Starwood Energy in 2010.

He’s also the founder and chief executive officer of Energizing Company, a California startup that’s planning to deploy its flagship utility-distributed microgrid project here in Sault Ste. Marie. In recent months, Martin has been thinking a lot about the history of his hometown.

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Stainless Steel and the Ring of Fire – by Rick Millette (Northern Policy Institute – October 1, 2014)

http://northernpolicy.wordpress.com/

It would be hard to find an adult in Northern Ontario who hasn’t heard of the Ring of Fire or doesn’t know what it promises for the North’s future. Most believe that long term prosperity for workers, industry and First Nations people is at their doorstep.

That dream extends beyond the basics. Many northerners suffer a sense of loss with every trainload of raw ore they see heading down the tracks and out of Northern Ontario. There’s a long-held belief that full value is not being retained for those resources.

With the discovery of chromite in the Ring of Fire several years ago, it didn’t take long for the value-added dream to be dreamt again. The North now has all the ingredients in their backyard to make stainless steel, a uniqueness not found anywhere else in the world. How incredulous would it be for Canada to be the only G8 country not to have a stainless steel industry when the chromite, nickel and iron are all in one place?

Although the timeline for the eventual development of the Ring of Fire may be unknown, few would believe that $60-billion of known mineral wealth will stay in the ground for very long.

One way to accelerate that extraction and to start generating wealth on three fronts, would be for our governments to invest in the development of a stainless steel industry.

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U.S. Steel filing throws fate of Hamilton, Ontario assets into question – by Euan Rocha and Allison Martell (Reuters Canada – September 21, 2014)

http://ca.reuters.com/

TORONTO (Reuters) – U.S. Steel Corp’s move to seek creditor protection for its Canadian operations throws into question the fate of the more than a century old steel operations in Hamilton, Ontario.

U.S. Steel acquired the Canadian operations – including the Hamilton assets and the newer Lake Erie facilities in Nanticoke, Ontario – through its acquisition of Stelco Inc in 2007. The Canadian operation was soon bleeding red ink, however, as demand for steel declined following the financial crisis.

Much of the Canadian operation’s value is seen residing in Lake Erie, with years of job cutbacks, environmental liabilities and the weight of a massive retiree base weighing on the worth of the Hamilton assets.

People familiar with the situation told Reuters that U.S. Steel had sought to restructure its Canadian operation this summer, before it sought creditor protection in Canada earlier this week. One plan included the parent company acquiring the Lake Erie facilities but divesting itself the Hamilton assets.

After those plans failed to pan out, some industry watchers think U.S. Steel’s move to seek creditor protection may just be the longer road toward the same end game.

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Posco sees Indonesia as a hot spot – by Joo Kyung-Don (Korea JoongAng Daily – September 18, 2014)

http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/

CILEGON, Indonesia — Sweat comes easily and often in Indonesia, where average daytime temperatures reach a humid 33 degrees Celsius (91 degrees Fahrenheit). And the hottest place in the country just might be Krakatau Posco, Southeast Asia’s first integrated steel mill.

“If you look at the history of steel industry, there is no mill on the Equator because it’s not easy to work in hot weather,” says Min Kyung-zoon, president of Krakatau Posco. “We are doing something that is outside the realm of common sense.”

The mill is a joint venture of Korea’s largest steelmaker, Posco, and Indonesia’s state-run steelmaker, Krakatau, in which the Korean company has a 70 percent stake.

It takes about 90 minutes, depending on Jakarta traffic, to drive to the industrial city of Cilegon on the northwest coast of the island of Java. Here, Posco is trying not only to make appositive change in the city, but in all of Indonesia.

For Posco, the success of Krakatau Posco – which has an annual capacity of 1.5 million tons each of slabs and steel plates – is important because it is the company’s first integrated steel mill overseas.

Considering that Posco was established 46 years ago in Pohang, North Gyeongsang, primarily by acquiring foreign technologies and know-how, it also signals the company’s evolving role in the global steel industry.

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Time to stop ‘saving’ U.S. Steel Canada – by Peter Foster (National Post – September 19, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Five years ago, outside the gates of U.S. Steel Canada’s Nanticoke plant on Lake Erie, unionized workers sported a sign reading “Guantanamo North.” The sign might have been accurate if the company had been trying to lock workers in rather than out, but its main significance lay in indicating the poisonous relations between the United Steelworkers and U.S. Steel, which had taken over the plant as part of its acquisition of Stelco in 2007.

This week the union was again posturing angrily following the announcement that U.S. Steel Canada has filed for bankruptcy protection. Since the end of 2009, it has suffered an aggregate loss of US$2.4-billion. Its liabilities surpass its assets by around US$2 billion. The company also announced this week that expansion plans north of the border were being shelved. The news sent the shares of parent U.S. Steel to a three year high.

Analysts have suggested that the need for protection be laid at the door of poor management, and that may well be a factor. However, at least as important is the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Meanwhile there are other major culprits: principally the Ontario and federal governments, with President Obama’s Buy American policies another major negative factor.

Ontario’s attempt to make Stelco a more desirable purchase by providing a forgivable loan to U.S. Steel, provisional on refurbishing Stelco’s depleted pension fund, has turned out to be a millstone. The fund is at least $800-million underwater, with requirements for the company to kick in further hundreds of millions of dollars in coming years.

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