Steel Strip

I came across this article by Humeyra Pamukat at Reuters.
Steel prices: Ready to recover ?
 
The worst could be over for depressed steel prices with slow improvement on the cards in Europe as evidence grows that destocking in the $800 billion industry is close to an end.
But analysts dare not talk about a sustainable recovery [...]

The speed of collapse in steel demand throughout the world surprised the producers, consumers, distributors and analysts, including MEPS researchers. In our last issue, we did predict a slowdown in the rate of growth in production which had been reported for the first eight months of 2008. However, the quarter on quarter reduction in the [...]

Well, the last quarter of 2008 was a shock to manufacturing and the steel industry, as the global financial crisis and resulting economic downturn started to hit home.
The first half of 2008 had seen high steel demand, rapidly rising prices and shortages. Many pundits were forecasting more of the same for the foreseeable future, without [...]

STEEL workers in Port Talbot face an anxious wait to find out if they will suffer the same devastating blow as their colleagues in Newport.
Around 500 workers at Corus’s Llanwern plant are being allowed to stay home on half of their basic pay because of a lack of work.
Although Corus has not made a similar [...]

Jaguar Land Rover has announced it is cutting 450 staff.
Three hundred managers will be made redundant while 150 salaried agency staff will also lose their jobs.
The firm, which was bought by Tata from Ford for £1.7bn last year, said the action was to combat the credit crunch and a "severe reduction in demand".
Based [...]

The crisis engulfing the West Midland car-making industry deepened as clutch manufacturer AP Driveline went into administration and vanmaker LDV said it was delaying paying bills.
The future of hundreds of companies seems to hang on an announcement expected from the government on Wednesday about a multi-billion scheme to restore credit to manufacturers and suppliers whose [...]

Chinese and Japanese steelmakers have demanded a record 40 per cent cut in iron ore prices in annual benchmark pricing negotiations, but are facing resistance from mining groups.
Vale, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, which account for more than 70 per cent of the world’s seaborne-traded ore, privately acknowledge that annual contract prices are likely to [...]

China’s cabinet will discuss concrete steps this week to support its slumping auto and steel industries, an official source told Reuters on Monday.
Assistance plans for auto and steel makers are likely to feature tax cuts and incentives to promote industrial consolidation and eliminate outdated factories, the source said.
 
Full Story Guardian.co.uk
Technorati Tags: China steel,Steel Industry

Nippon Steel Corp the world’s second-biggest steel maker, is likely to reduce output further as it struggles with weak demand and pressures for price cuts from battered auto makers in the downturn.
"We have said 2 million tonnes, but it probably won’t stop there," Chairman Akio Mimura told Reuters on Sunday, referring to its previous plan [...]

Purchasing estimates that U.S. steel purchasing will have dropped 9% to 108 million net tons in 2008 when final statistics are tallied. And now, the analysts at Fitch Ratings forecast at least another 5% decline in buying in 2009 to 103 million. That means that production will remain weak and pricing will stay depressed. And, [...]