Steel Strip

Tata Steel’s European arm Corus on Friday entered into a pact with Thailand-based Sahviriya Steel Industries to sell its Teesside Cast Products plant in the UK for about $500 million.
“Corus UK Ltd and Sahaviriya Steel Industries Public Company Ltd today signed a Memorandum of Understanding which sets out the scope of a potential transaction whereby [...]

Corus has confirmed that unused carbon credits will form part of any deal struck on the sale of its Teesside Cast Products plant; a recent report says the company had one of the highest surpluses of carbon allowances in Europe. The steel maker was among three EU companies left with the most unused carbon credits [...]

Steel firm Corus is to take on 154 new workers in South Yorkshire, and resume apprentice and graduate recruitment, it has been announced.
The latest plans will bring the number of new workers hired by the firm to more than 300 since March, with the Speciality Steels division recruiting trainees for the first time since the [...]

Came across this interesting article on the BBC website today
By Tim Bowler Business reporter, BBC World Service
Are the world’s iron ore mining companies putting the world recovery in jeopardy, by forcing up prices?
Iron ore is a key component in the manufacture of steel, and is used in construction and heavy [...]

The tensile strength of steel can be quoted on a number of imperial and metric scales. The factors below are useful for converting.

One newton per square mm is equal to :-

Metric

bar

10

kilopascal

1000

hectopascal

10000

megapascal

1

millibar

10000

pascal

1000000

kilogram per square centimetre

10.19716

kilogram per square metre

101971.6

newton per square metre

1000000

kilonewton per square metre

1000

meganewton per square metre

1

newton per square centimetre

100

British and U.S. (Imperial system)

thousand pounds [...]

EU STEEL COIL PRODUCERS FACE HIGHER INPUT COSTS AS DEMAND COLLAPSES
Market sentiment has been knocked by the recent economic turmoil and sovereign debt issues in the eurozone. Strip mill product prices are fairly flat this month. Domestic producers are still keen to lift basis values significantly for the third quarter. However, most steel consumers and [...]

Hot on the heels of the recent announcement by ArcelorMittal of possible steel production cutbacks, Bloomberg are reporting discussion of cuts in China:
Chinese steelmakers are likely to cut production in the third quarter because of “weak” demand from auto and appliance makers, according to the nation’s second- biggest mill.
Slower demand may prompt smaller makers to [...]

ArcelorMittal, said on Thursday it was considering halting up to three European blast furnaces (BFs) in the third quarter to meet lower demand. "In Europe the third quarter is characterised by lower demand due to summer vacation shutdowns.
In order to be prepared ArcelorMittal is technically in a position to reduce its production by stopping [...]

The latest MEPS report suggests that steel prices may have reached a peak. Despite this Northern European Mills continue to pursue price increases for the third quarter:-
Excerpt:
In Western Europe, producers are talking up period three prices but firm negotiations are only just starting. Customers believe that some of the numbers being proposed are far [...]

Despite  the European steel mills remaining bullish on third quarter prices, we are beginning to see signs that may indicate a weakening quite soon.
The price increases have never been demand driven, with the mills quoting cost increases and particularly iron ore as a driving factors.
A recent report from Platts reproduced at Yahoo finance indicates [...]