Steel Strip

We spotted the following report on netbusiness
THOUSANDS of workers at Redcar’s Teesside Cast Products site were boosted today by news that the steelmaker had secured orders to keep the plant operational until the end of October.
Since April, when the international consortium responsible for buying nearly 80% of the plant’s output abandoned a 10-year deal, [...]

MEPS have published the following forecast
After peaking in August 2008 at €860 per tonne, the MEPS EU average flat products’ price collapsed to €420 per tonne in May this year. This was the lowest figure for more than five years. The weakening economic climate pushed end-user demand to extremely low [...]

Production at the Corus hot strip mill at Llanwern near Newport is to restart next month, the steel giant says.
It has been mothballed since January, but the company says there has been some growth in orders and it wants to satisfy this increasing demand.
However, the restart will not reverse any of the 528 job [...]

We spotted this report today at Reuters, quoting from the metal Bulletin.
After a months-long rally to a 10-month high last week, the
price of benchmark hot-rolled coil in China—which makes half
the world’s steel—plunged 7.6 percent to around 3,987.5 yuan
a tonne this week, data from Metal Bulletin showed.
That in turn has dragged iron ore prices off their [...]

We have been seeing reports recently on signs of increasing demand for steel, along with speculation on higher steel prices.
Stocks are low at distributors, and some grades and sizes are unavailable. galvanised strip is currently very difficult to find in the UK.
However, whilst there seems to be a real increase in demand in China, it [...]

German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp reported Friday a third quarter net loss of €630 million ($900 million) as the global recession cut into demand for steel.
The Duesseldorf-based company, Germany’s largest steel producer, said the loss comes after a profit of €613 million in the third quarter of its 2008 fiscal year.
Sales for the period fell to [...]

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 [...]

As predicted, the MEPS- Global Carbon Steel price moved up by over 1 percent in July. Higher input costs forced local producers to implement advances in domestic selling figures, with varying success across the three regions and products researched. Strip mill categories recorded the largest gains. Inventory adjustment is almost complete, with some shortages developing. [...]

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 [...]

China has formally arrested and charged four employees of mining firm Rio Tinto with stealing trade secrets and taking bribes, Chinese state media reports.
The accused are Australian national Stern Hu and three Chinese employees of the Anglo-Australian company.
The four have been in police custody in Shanghai since early July. Rio Tinto denies any wrongdoing. [...]