TPT July 2015

Global Marketplace

baby boomers retire, leaving a void in skilled trades workers and others. Another concern is that auto makers, accounting for 40 per cent of AMD’s business, continually demand lighter- weight but no less strong grades of steel as they strive for greater fuel efficiency. The search for those materials keeps 85 people busy in the company’s research and development labs. “Aluminium is a huge threat to us,” the AMD chief told Mr Arnold. “There is a lot of intensity in the research area to combat alternative materials.” But these are concerns that USS can only envy. › The challenge faced by the two companies together is that posed by imports, with the situation for Canadian steelmakers not much better than what confronts their counterparts to the south. Mr Donnelly told his Chamber of Commerce audience, “Imports remain a huge issue in North America.” The Hamilton Spectator reported that the Canadian Steel ProducersAssociation backs that claim. Its data indicates that Canada’s demand for steel is roughly 16.6 million metric tons a year. Imports of 9.9 million mt give foreign producers about 60 per cent of that market. Other news of steel . . . › Grain-orientated electrical steel (GOES), a fairly niche product made by only 16 producers worldwide, is essential to the manufacture of transformer cores, and the European transformer industry has expressed deep concern about anti-dumping duties imposed by the European Union on

For his part, Mr Longhi explained the poor performance of USS by citing the battering sustained by the American steel industry from metal dumped in the US at less than its cost of production. The US Department of Commerce supports that view. Through February the department reported that steel imports to the US rose 25 per cent from the same period a year earlier. “Illegal dumping in this market is ongoing and it has to end,” Mr Longhi said. “We need legislative relief that is sustainable.” On another front, USS is in the midst of a multi-year cost- cutting programme. Dave Burritt, the company’s chief financial officer, told analysts that the programme, known as the Carnegie Way, will yield savings of $340 million in 2015. As for the company’s struggling Canadian branch, in bankruptcy protection since September, its financial results are no longer included in the figures reported by the American firm. “They are going through their motions to get their issues resolved,” Mr Longhi said. “We will keep an eye on it and see how it goes.” Mr Arnold rather pointedly observed that the parent firm’s stake in the Canadian restructuring is more than a matter of monitoring from a distance: USS believes it is owed more than $2.2 billion by its unit in Canada. t He Common enemY : ImPorts That is not to say that AMD, while much more comfortably fixed, is entirely worry-free. Mr Donnelly said the company is facing “a huge wave of retirements in the next few years” as

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J uly 2015