TPT-January-2015

Global Marketplace

Philip Blenkinsop, who is responsible for Reuters news out of Belgium and Luxembourg, noted Mr Mittal’s assertion that years of plant closures and job cuts had served the steelmaker well in Europe. In the context of an improved steel market overall, the cost and volume improvements would help counter the effects of the price decline in iron ore. (“ArcelorMittal Says Strength in Key Steel Markets Offsets Mine Pain”) But it is the US, with its increased profit from higher steel shipments and average prices even as fixed costs have risen – buoyed by a broad-based recovery and the building of inventories – which provides ArcelorMittal with the most encouragement. The group, which is double the size of its rivals Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp combined, said US steel consumption would be 8.25-8.75 per cent higher this year. › American steelmakers would appear to justify that confidence. Industry leaders Nucor and US Steel Corp have reported strong demand from the auto, appliance, and oil and gas industries, as well as lower energy costs. The domestic construction sector, which uses about half of the world’s steel, has also improved from 2013. As for its own prospects, ArcelorMittal said that strong demand in key developed markets meant it would maintain its forecast for steel shipments 3 per cent higher this year than in 2014. Iron ore shipments, it said, would be up 15 per cent after the ramp-up of capacity at its mines in eastern Canada. China and Latin America: a sharp rise in imports of Chinese steel turns a spotlight on a complex evolving relationship “Latin America is important to China as a source of minerals that the Chinese can convert into products like steel. Latin America is not a major export market for China although that could begin to change in the long term.” Margaret Myers, director of the China-Latin American programme at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington- based think tank, had been asked about the recent increase in China’s steel exports to Latin America. This was, she told Paul Welitzkin of China Daily USA , a reflection of a Chinese steel industry in transition and not of pressing immediate concern. (“Steel Exports Unlikely to Strain Sino-Latin American Bond,” 25 October) Ms Myers’s view is at variance with that of the Latin American Steel Association (Alacero), which in September urged the governments of the region to develop public policies to address steel imports from China. The trade group – based in Santiago, Chile – reported that these jumped 60 per cent year-over-year over the first seven months of 2014. It said Chile, Brazil and Central America were the main destinations for the Chinese steel, but that imports to Mexico were also rising rapidly.

Steel A visionary pedestrian drawbridge lends interest – and then some – to a venerable London waterway “For the ubiquity of the mechanism used to operate it, it’s got an ingenious amount of bang for the buck. With a few pieces of expertly crafted steel, some counterweights, and a hydraulic jack, these designers built a bridge unlike any other in the world.” The assertion, by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan of gizmodo. com, is incontrovertible. The structure in question – the Merchant Square Bridge over Paddington Canal in central London – is unique by any reckoning. (“This Hydraulic Bridge Opens and Closes Like a 30-Ton Steel Fan,” 2 October) The 65-foot-long bridge is divided lengthwise into five distinct steel beams. Each beam is cantilevered out over the canal with a massive counterweight hidden in the ground at one side and controlled by an underwater hydraulic jack. When the bridge is down, the beams lock together to create a 10-foot-wide path across the canal, complete to handrails. When the bridge is raised, the five beams compose a twisted steel form described by its London-based creators, Knight Architects and AKT II, as “a kinetic sculpture.” A respondent to the gizmodo.com article offered another vision: “Edward Scissor-bridge.” ArcelorMittal sees rising demand in US and European steel markets as offsetting a plunge in iron ore prices Given the impact on ArcelorMittal’s mining operations of iron ore prices at five-year lows, analysts had expressed concern that the world’s largest steelmaker would temper its outlook for 2015. But in early November the company – which makes about 6 per cent of global steel and is also one of the world’s largest iron ore producers – published a remarkably upbeat forecast. ArcelorMittal, a benchmark for manufacturing worldwide, did cut its estimate for 2014 global steel consumption growth to 2.25-2.75 per cent from 3.0-3.5 per cent, citing mainly the slowdown in China. But it also made a sharp upward revision of its overall market estimate for US steel consumption, while that for Europe was left little changed. Together the two regions account for about two-thirds steel of shipments by the Luxembourg-based steel group. “What we say, which is important, is that we are constructive on the US economy and the European economy next year,” the company’s CFO Aditya Mittal told Reuters in Brussels on 7 November, adding that he also sees a steel rebound just ahead in Brazil, which fell into recession in the first half of 2014.

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J anuary 2015