From the category archives:

Geography

China should get out of steel not strong arm iron ore

July 10, 2009

Things have got serious in the iron ore negotiations in China with spurious ‘espionage’ charges levelled against domestic steel producers and Rio Tinto executives – or here if you don’t have an FT subscription. It’s a stretch to call any iron ore information a state secret, so what might have prompted Chinese officials to take [...]

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Profile of the German Steel Industry in 2009

July 7, 2009

The German Steel Federation (VDEh) is one of the best sources of information about its national steel industry (and lots of others too) anywhere in the world. Take for instance, this excellent recent profile of the German Steel Industry (in PDF) by Herr Dr-Ing Carl-Dieter Wuppermann. If you send them to us, we’ll be happy [...]

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US flat products imports drop another 19% in May

June 19, 2009

Based on reported import licenses, flat products imports into the US declined 19% from 433,000 short tons in April to 351,000 tons in May. This compares to 816,000 tons of flat products imports in September 2008 when we started collecting the license data. Cut plate, hot roll, cold roll, and hot dip galvanized imports all [...]

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US long products imports rise 3% in May

June 18, 2009

Based on reported import licenses, US long products imports rose 3% from 97,000 short tons in April to 100,000 tons in May. This can be compared to 242,000 tons of long products imports in May 2008. The most significant changes by product category were a rise in rebar imports from 31,000 tons in April to [...]

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China results for May: crude production up 7% and apparent consumption highest ever

June 16, 2009

Chinese crude steel production climbed 7% from 43.4 million metric tonnes in April to 46.5 million tonnes in May. Net finished steel exports remained negative as finished exports declined from 1.41 million tonnes to 1.35 million tonnes and finished imports grew from 1.62 million tonnes to 1.65 million tonnes. As a result, apparent finished steel [...]

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World crude steel production slips 3% in April

May 21, 2009

The World Steel Association published the latest global crude steel production data yesterday. It’s now in the Nerds crude steel production spreadsheet below. The data (which as mentioned previously) are often significantly revised in later bulletins show a 3% decline month to month from March to April and 24% decline year on year 2008 to [...]

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US long products imports fall 45% in April

May 20, 2009

As predicted in an earlier post, US long products imports in April dropped to a new historical low. Based on reported import licenses, US long products imports dropped 45% from 168,000 short tons in March to 92,000 tons in April. About 74,000 tons of this decline come from a 73% reduction in rebar licenses compared [...]

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China results for April: crude production down 4% and finished steel exports down 16%

May 15, 2009

Chinese crude steel production dropped 4% from 45.1 million metric tonnes in March to 43.4 million tonnes in April. Finished steel exports continued their decline from 1.67 million tonnes in March to 1.41 million tonnes in April, a 16% drop. Finished steel imports rose to 1.62 million tonnes, resulting in net finished imports of 210,000 [...]

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