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Steel and Stainless Steel Industries

RPT-COLUMN-Nickel loses its electric car fizz, realises it’s still a steel play – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – November 20, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Nov 20 (Reuters) – The nickel market is learning that there is a difference in believing you are the next big thing in battery metals and the reality that you are actually still beholden to the Chinese steel sector.

Nickel was one of the darlings at last month’s annual London Metal Exchange Week, with everybody from producers, to traders and consumers talking up its prospects on the back of the expected surge in electric vehicles.

The euphoria helped drive benchmark LME nickel to a more than two-year closing high of $12,920 a tonne on Nov. 6, but since then the price has stumbled.

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China’s Quest for Clean Air Is Shaking Up Industry and Inflation (Bloomberg News – November 20, 2017)

https://www.bloombergquint.com/

(Bloomberg) — The great Chinese environmental cleanup, now in full swing, is shifting the corporate landscape in unexpected ways and even stoking inflationary pressure that may soon be felt in supply chains worldwide.

As President Xi Jinping’s government intensifies the fight against the country’s world-class pollution problem, companies are scrambling to adapt to tighter regulation while investing in cleaner energy.

In industries from steel to textiles and consumer goods, the resulting shakeout has left the survivors with far more pricing power. That in turn is reinforcing the already-resurgent factory prices that contribute to global inflation.

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Nickel Supply Rush Seen Cooling Rally Before Batteries Boost (Bloomberg News – November 13, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Forget electric vehicles for now. Nickel must first contend with a new wave of supply from Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as a Chinese stainless steel market that’s at risk of slowing after a two-year boom.

The metal climbed to the highest level this month since June 2015, lifted by predictions of a jump in demand from electric vehicles. But prices have since retreated as the boost from new energy autos lies several years in the future and investors reset their focus on more immediate concerns.

Batteries will represent only 3 percent of demand this year, compared with the two-thirds used in stainless steel, according to the International Nickel Study Group.

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China to cancel a third of iron ore mining rights in fight against smog – by Muyu Xu and Manolo Serapio Jr (Reuters U.S. – September 27, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

QINGDAO, China (Reuters) – China will cancel about a third of its iron ore mining licenses, mostly belonging to small polluting mines as part of Beijing’s efforts to improve air quality, a mining association official said on Wednesday.

Over 1,000 mining rights will be eliminated under China’s campaign against pollution, Lei Pingxi, chief engineer at the Metallurgical Mines’ Association of China, told an industry conference.

“Some small miners who didn’t pay attention to environmental issues simply closed down temporarily to cope with inspections,” said Lei. “However, these small miners will be forced to upgrade their production processes in order to survive, otherwise they will be cleared out.”

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Unfair Trade, Uncertainty Killing American Aluminum And Steel – by Leo W. Gerard (Huffington Post – September 26, 2017)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Kameen Thompson started his workday Sept. 15 thinking that his employer, ArcelorMittal in Conshohocken, Pa., the largest supplier of armored plate to the U.S. military, might hire some workers to reduce a recent spate of overtime.

Just hours later, though, he discovered the absolute opposite was true.

ArcelorMittal announced that, within a year, it would idle the mill that stretches half a mile along the Schuylkill River. Company officials broke the bad news to Kameen, president of the United Steelworkers (USW) local union at Conshohocken, and Ron Davis, the grievance chair, at a meeting where the two union officers had hoped to hear about hiring.

ArcelorMittal wouldn’t say when it would begin the layoffs or how many workers would lose their jobs or which mill departments would go dark. The worst part for everyone now is the uncertainty, Kameen told me last week.

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Makeover for world’s oldest city drives India steel recovery – by Swansy Afonso (Hamilton Spectator – August 30, 2017)

https://www.thespec.com

The world’s oldest living city is getting a makeover. Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest site on the Ganges River in northern India, is one of 100 places earmarked to receive trillions of rupees to transform their aging infrastructure and become ‘Smart Cities,’ replete with affordable housing, improved sanitation, and better transportation.

To build it all, India plans to triple its steel-making capacity, making it the world’s second-biggest producer, trumping Japan, and reviving an industry that a year ago was on its knees.

“India is one of the bright spots for the global steel industry,” said Bijoy Thomas, a senior analyst at India Ratings & Research, the local unit of Fitch Ratings, by phone from New Delhi. “We have a very low base of per-capita consumption and the nation is on the path to development.”

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RPT-COLUMN-Port stocks the growing elephant in the room for iron ore prices – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – August 7, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Chinese steel and iron ore prices continue to rise in lock-step. In Shanghai today the most active steel rebar contract went limit-up, surging 7 percent to 4,013 yuan per ($597) per tonne, its highest level since April 2013. Where Shanghai steel leads, Dalian iron ore follows.

The most-traded contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange jumped as much as 7.3 percent to 587.50 yuan per tonne at one stage, its highest level since March 21. And where Dalian leads, the rest of the iron ore world follows. On the Singapore Exchange the cash contract has just punched up through the $77-per tonne level, also for the first time since March.

There is much speculative froth in this mix. Market open interest on both Shanghai steel and Dalian iron ore hit record highs last month and is still at historically elevated levels. However, this is not just irrational exuberance.

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Minnesota Grand Rapids ore will make pig iron in Ohio – by John Myers (Duluth News Tribune – August 1, 2017)

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

Iron ore concentrate from Minnesota will go to make pig iron in Lorain, Ohio under a deal reached between fledgling ERP Iron Ore and Republic Steel.

Under the agreement ERP will produce concentrated ore at its recently acquired Magnetation operations outside Grand Rapids, move it by rail to its Reynolds, Ind. plant to be baked into pellets and then ship those pellets to Ohio to be made into pig iron.

The two companies will be joint owners of the new pig-iron plant to be built on the site of a now-shuttered Republic blast furnace mill.

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Trump’s Already Spooking Buyers of Foreign Steel, Cliffs Says – by Joe Deaux (Bloomberg News – July 27, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

President Donald Trump’s pledge to safeguard U.S. steelmakers from cheap overseas shipments is already working even as hopes fade of an imminent announcement of measures.

At least that’s what Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lourenco Goncalves says is happening as buyers shy away from imported steel in case the White House hands down restrictions that would invoke retroactive penalties. The ensuing increase in demand for domestic metal is allowing U.S. producers to push up prices, he said in a telephone interview.

“We are seeing that happening right now,” said Goncalves, whose company sells iron ore to U.S. mills. “Right now there’s a lot of people who are scared.”

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China’s steel, aluminum output at record as U.S. mulls penalties – by Muyu Xu and Melanie Burton (Reuters U.S. – July 16, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

BEIJING/MELBOURNE (Reuters) – China churned out record amounts of steel and aluminum in June as producers rushed to cash-in on rallying prices in the wake of a drive by Beijing to crack down on output of low-grade metal.

That could fuel concerns the world’s top steel producer will export more metal, stoking global oversupply and fanning tensions with the United States after it accused the nation of flooding international markets with cheap aluminum and steel.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to use a Cold War-era law to restrict imports for national security reasons as bilateral talks between Washington and Beijing continue. China has long-denied that it has been offloading metals abroad at the expense of foreign producers.

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[Dr. Peter Warrian] U of T expert says future is bright for Canadian steel – by Elaine Della-Mattia (Sault Star -June 12, 2017)

http://www.saultstar.com/

But if Canada wants to retain a manufacturing industry, then the steel
industry will need to be a part of it, he said, because steel is the
materials backbone of manufacturing.

Dr. Peter Warrian, a University of Toronto professor and Canada’s leading academic expert on the Canadian steel industry, told city council that the industry will always have a volatile market but the need for steel in the future could certainly increase.

While prices rose substantially – 40 per cent – between October 2016 and March 2017, allowing cash flow improvements for steelmakers like Algoma, the problem remains that the cyclical nature of the industry will not see those high prices be sustained for long periods of time. And that means, investments into pension plans, injections of capital improvements and maintenance plans will not get the long-term attention they need, he said.

And while this has been a problem experienced to Algoma, the local steelmaker found itself in a serious cash crunch because of the long-term contacts it had inked that found itself paying for raw materials at exceptionally high prices – much higher prices than actual market values, Warrian said.

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Chevy’s Anti-Aluminum Ads with the Ford F150 haven’t Helped Sell the Silverado – by Patrick Rall (Torque News – June 7, 2017)

 

https://www.torquenews.com/

It has been just over a year since Chevrolet rolled out their Silverado ads featuring a new Ford F150 bed being damaged by dropping various objects onto the aluminum surface and in that year, Ford sales have risen while Silverado sales have dropped – showing that the automotive consumer may not favor negative advertising.

Back in June 2016, Chevrolet rolled out a series of commercial for the Silverado which featured their truck parked next to a new Ford F150. In these commercials, “real people” looked on as a load of paver stones was dropped from a frontloader into the bed of each truck.

The Silverado’s steel bed held up to the bricks without only scuffs and dents, while the bed of the F150 saw more severe damage. Of course, the “real people” reacted with great surprise at this and when a large, steel toolbox pushed over the edge of the bedside did significantly more damage to the F150’s aluminum bed, the onlookers were equally stunned.

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A Revitalized Pittsburgh Says the President Used a Rusty Metaphor – by Kim Lyons, Emily Badger and Alan Blinder (New York Times – June 2, 2017)

https://www.nytimes.com/

PITTSBURGH — President Trump picked the wrong city as a counterpoint in announcing his plans on Thursday to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord. “I was elected,” the president said, “to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

But the president was hardly speaking about a place of domestic political strength: Although Mr. Trump carried Pennsylvania last fall, 75 percent of voters in Pittsburgh voted for Hillary Clinton.

In defiance of the president, city leaders vowed again on Thursday to pursue their own climate action. Pittsburgh, they point out, is the wrong metaphor anyway: The former steel hub has spent the last 30 years trying to remake its economy in precisely the mold that climate advocates envision.

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Ontario Sault Chamber advocates for steel in Ottawa – by Elaine Della-Mattia (Sault Star – June 5, 2017)

http://www.saultstar.com/

Sault Ste. Marie’s Chamber of Commerce joined their counterparts from Windsor-Essex Regional and Hamilton in Ottawa last week for an all-party Parliamentary steel caucus meeting. The message, said Sault Chamber Rory Ring, is simple.

Canada and the United States should not be fighting each other. Instead, as a joint North American market, they should work jointly to make sure the non-market economies are dealt with without creating blows to their own intertwined economies.

That’s the message the joint Chamber group was sending to the steel caucus, which will be attending an international meeting later this month in Washington. Sault MP Terry Sheehan, co-chair of the all-party Parliamentary steel caucus group said the same message has and will continue to be pushed by the steel caucus and from the Canadian government to its US counterparts.

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The Hard-to-Believe Steel Shortage That’s Unfolding in China – by Jasmine Ng, Perry Williams and Stephen Engle (Bloomberg News – June 5, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The world’s top steelmaker may have a shortage of steel. China has a lack of rebar, according to iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group Ltd., which says a shortfall of the key product helps to explain a divergence between the price of the commodity it digs up with the alloy it’s made into.

There’s a shortage of rebar, Fortescue’s Chief Executive Officer Nev Power said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Beijing on Monday, citing closures in China of some steel producers, especially operators of induction furnaces. Rebar, or reinforcement bar, is a basic item used to reinforce concrete.

China makes half of the world’s steel, and in recent years it’s been more associated with excess production, soaring steel exports, and sinking prices.

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