Steel Strip

Britain’s manufacturing sector expanded unexpectedly last month and at the fastest rate in two years as the weak pound made exports cheaper and imports more expensive, according to new data.
Barely a month after Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, said that weak sterling “will be helpful” in rebalancing Britain’s economy, the latest [...]

Salzgitter Chief Executive Wolfgang Leese on Tuesday cautioned against premature optimism in the steel sector, warning that markets were fragile and that a recovery in demand is unlikely to be sustained.
If things go well, demand will continue to be flat, Leese said on the sidelines of an event in Garbsen, near Hanover, Germany.
Signs of recovery [...]

With steel shipments from metals service centers slowly rising, inventories of the metal, in decline since early last year, rose slightly in the United States and Canada, the Metals Activity Report from the Metals Service Center Institute shows. Shipments of aluminum products also rose slightly, but inventories of the light metal continued to decline in [...]

Reuters report that ThyssenKrupp will shed as many as 20,000 jobs in it’s current financial year in response to the current economic slump.
Read full story at Reuters
Technorati Tags: Steel Industry,Germany,ThyssenKrupp

ArcelorMittal will bring 165 people back to work next week, but it will still be more than a month before the Cleveland steel plant’s blast furnace fires up and starts melting metal again.
Plant manager Terry Fedor said Wednesday that the company is still negotiating with the United Steelworkers of America Local 979 to figure [...]

The Indian owner of Jaguar Land Rover has told the UK government it no longer needs support for the carmaker, after obtaining private funding.
Tata said it had secured some direct bank loans, as well as guarantees that would allow it access to a £340m European Investment Bank loan.
Government funding had been offered but did [...]

Vanmaker LDV is expected to be placed in administration by a court later, threatening up to 850 jobs and thousands more in the supply chain.
Attempts to sell Birmingham-based LDV as a going concern have failed.
Talks with one potential buyer, the Malaysian firm Weststar, broke down at the last minute last weekend, leading LDV to [...]

Malaysian firm Weststar is said to be on the verge of taking over LDV after the troubled van maker was offered a £5m four-week loan from the government.
Negotiations between the company, LDV and UK government officials continued into the night to finalise the deal and avoid administration.
The company had been set to go into [...]

Chrysler is to enter bankruptcy protection after failing to persuade a number of hedge funds to write off its debts, a White House official has said.
President Barack Obama is due to make a statement shortly on the future of the struggling US carmaker.
The news comes as Chrysler has been in last minute talks to [...]

The Birmingham based van maker LDV has applied to enter in to administration.
The Russian owned company has been in difficulty for some time as sales of commercial vehicles have collapsed. An earlier  bid for Government help did not fail entirely, but help was offered only on the basis that their current financial situation was stabilised [...]