Steel Strip

The German steel industry and the IG Metall union last night agreed to a 5.2 pct wage increase effective March 1 and valid for 13 months for 85,000 steel workers in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bremen and Lower Saxony.
Workers this month will also get a 200 eur one-time payment.
The agreement is considered a guideline [...]

U.S. steelmakers could benefit from new iron ore price hikes because unlike many Asian and European manufacturers they are less dependent on global supplies of the raw material, analysts said on Tuesday.
"Ironically, the higher the increases in global Fe (iron ore) costs, the better off domestic North American steelmakers are," said industry analyst Michelle Applebaum, [...]

Hot rolled steel strip seems to be in short supply here in the UK at the moment. It’s hard to put this down to an excess of demand as manufacturing activity levels are somewhat muted.
At the same time as the steel manufacturers are announcing price increases, they are imposing allocations upon service centres and big [...]

Yesterday I had a call from a domain name registration company. They were calling to warn me that someone, at an unbelievable cost of £800.00 was in the process of registering every possible variant of my domain steelstrip.co.uk.
They really sounded convincing, and asked if any aggrieved employees had left recently, or if I was having [...]

Following recent price agreements made by Asian Steel manufacturers, ThyssenKrupp  has agreed to a 65 pct price hike for acquiring iron ore from raw material producer Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD), a spokesman said. Last year, the German group bought more than 100 mln tonnes of iron ore. [...]

Japan’s Nippon Steel  has agreed to a 65 percent rise in the price it will pay for iron ore under term contracts, industry sources and a Chinese steel industry website said on Sunday.
Prices will be effective April 1, 2008.
"An international steel mill has concluded 2008 iron ore negotiations. The 2008 iron ore price will rise [...]

Expressing concern over the steep increase in the prices of iron and steel, especially in Punjab, due to the imposition of entry tax and hoarding by the cartel of steel trades of Mandi Gobindgarh, the Hand Tools Panel of Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) yesterday said the price rise had led to a significant fall [...]

 
Salzgitter AG said it will increase steel prices from April 1 in response to higher raw material and transport costs, following its European peers. Prices for flat-bar steel are due to rise by about 15 pct on average, those for heavy plate will be lifted by an unspecified percentage, and steel girder [...]

The threat of Chinese steel exports undermining the health of the global steel industry has been “greatly reduced”, Lakshmi Mittal said on Wednesday after announcing a 30 per cent increase in net income for ArcelorMittal last year.
Mr Mittal, chief executive and main owner of the world’s biggest steelmaker, said the smaller amounts of Chinese-made steel [...]

Nippon Steel plans to raise prices for steel sheet and plate by 10%-20%, reflecting the higher cost of iron ore, according to the Nikkei Weekly, a business newspaper in Tokyo. The steel price increase is targeted for April and is keyed to steel mill products used in automobiles and major appliances, ships and machinery. The [...]