From the category archives:

Data

Steel producer output reductions by date

October 23, 2008

Reuters India has very helpfully provided a chronology of recent steel industry production cuts going back to the middle of September. This is the link to the article. While the FT today reports the slowdown of Chinese steel production. The essence of the FT report is this… Shan Shanghua, secretary-general of the China Iron and Steel Association, […]

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How low can we go? GDP and steel demand

October 17, 2008

Yesterday, I made a presentation at the American Metal Market conference on wire & wire rod. The title was “How low can we go?” and my purpose was to provide a few heuristics for relating GDP projections to steel demand, both globally and in the US. I tried to avoid making a specific forecast because […]

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US long products imports remain low in September

October 17, 2008

US long products import licenses stayed low at 207,000 short tons in September, compared to August actual imports of 232,000 tons.  Licenses granted up to October 15th indicate that rebar imports in October will decline significantly compared to typical monthly levels (16,000 tons of rebar licenses to October 15th compared to 83,000 tons of actual […]

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Revised US imports of wire rod in July

September 25, 2008

July wire rod imports reported in our earlier post have been revised to 94,000 tons. The earlier figure was incorrect because it did not account for a change in wire rod import codes put into effect in July. See the updated spreadsheet below.  

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Where to go to dig up the facts about iron ore

September 25, 2008

There has been a lot of news lately about how the largest iron ore producers want to change the traditional yearly contract negotiations with their biggest customers.  If you are trying to follow what’s going on and you need some background on the iron ore market and history, you can get some answers online through […]

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China results for August: lower crude production but higher net exports

September 19, 2008

Crude steel production in China declined 5% from 44.9 million metric tonnes in July to 42.6m tonnes in August. Net exports increased from 5.8m tonnes to 6.4m tonnes, and the export share of finished steel production continued its climb from 18% in July to 20% in August.  

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