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A regular review of recently placed international new plant orders, announced for new and upgraded plants, expansions, modernizations and revamps
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Service Center of the Year - Jemison Metals
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“It’s a little bit premature to think that aluminum has turned the corner,” Carol Cowan, senior vice president of Moody’s Investors Service Inc., told AMM. “We’re not going to take a lot of comfort from a one-month statistic change.”
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Whether it’s on the roads or in the skies, there could still be some forward momentum for aluminum come 2016.
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U.S. shipments of copper and copper alloy scrap to China grew more than 25 percent last year, helping to push up overall exports by 22.6 percent to more than 1.1 million short tons.
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Vale SA is back. After enduring a one-year strike at its Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ontario, operations, the Brazilian company has returned in force to the American market, easing supply pressures and leading to a severe drop in premiums. The company had total estimated output of 144,000 tonnes of nickel in 2010, ranking it third among world producers.
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The global copper market moved into deficit last year, with the International Copper Study Group estimating a seasonally adjusted refined deficit of some 60,000 tonnes in September 2010, the most recent figure available. All signs indicate that deficit conditions will continue through 2011.
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World use of refined zinc metal grew 16.7 percent in the first 11 months of 2010, although supply exceeded demand, according to the latest data from the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.
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Is it 2008 again? For ferrous scrap prices it almost looks like, as Yankee catcher Yogi Berra once said, déjà vu all over again. The steady climb over the past few months might make some believe that.
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An open letter from the Steel Manufacturers Association’s board of directors to members of the 112th U.S. Congress and steel policymakers
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American Metal Market asked Thomas J. Gibson, American Iron and Steel Institute president and chief executive officer, to address some key issues facing the U.S. steel industry as a new year and a new Congress get underway.
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If Steven J. Demetriou could go back and do things differently during Aleris International Inc.’s 15-month stint under bankruptcy protection, he wouldn’t change very much.
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After decades, or in some instances a century, of operating at one location in a city or town, scrapyards are being told to pack up and move. Land that nobody wanted long ago now has become prime real estate.
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Credit availability remains tight and more deals than ever are cash-and-carry. Acquisitions need to be as close to no-risk as possible and growth needs to be held closer to a realistic overall economic approach. And service centers’ optimism is curbed by their need to avoid speculation on prices and volumes.
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They had been chewing over the idea for almost a decade.
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November has arrived. The leaves are falling (and clogging up the storm drains), tailgate parties are under way at stadiums across the country (providing an economic boost to the nation’s bratwurst and beer makers) and the ferrous scrap and steel industries are slowly entwining in the year-end buy or not-to-buy scrap waltz.
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The effects of the recession appear to be easing in the titanium industry, raising hopes of recovery. At the same time, new opportunities are presenting themselves that could lead to the availability of lower-cost titanium products in a number of applications previously priced out of titanium. Thus, the recovery may coincide with a somewhat transformed business landscape.
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Noranda Aluminum Holding Corp. is growing up. Once a small subsidiary of both Falconbridge Ltd. and Xstrata Plc, then a privately held asset of investment fund Apollo Management LP, Noranda has finally stepped into the public spotlight on its own two feet—and according to its top executive, its stance has never been stronger.
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And so it came to pass that the last of the Big Three (though they were no longer as big and were now more than three) proclaimed that factory bundles would no longer be sold openly.
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Cuba is one of the world’s most important sources of nickel. The island nation has the second-largest base reserves of nickel, with an estimated 29 million tons, or about 15 percent of the global total. Cuba’s nickel deposits also are considered to be of the highest quality, with an average nickel content of 90 percent.
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Scientific researchers, policy advocates and journalists all have to weigh the extent to which statistics reflect reality.
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One of the odd parallels of the scrap market is that the flow of obsolete ferrous scrap can be a lot like the life cycle of a vehicle’s lead-acid battery.
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The metals and mining industry hasn’t inspired many notable novels; Nostromo, Joseph Conrad’s tale of Latin American silver mines, and Emile Zola’s Germinal, an exposé of coal mining in 19th Century France, are perhaps the two most famous exceptions.
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The competitive position of electric-arc furnace (EF) steel producers is dependent on an adequate domestic supply of reasonably priced ferrous scrap.
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What does an Apple iPad have in common with solar power technology infrastructure? More than you might think. According to some aluminum producers, both markets are primed for serious growth and offer an exciting opportunity for the aluminum sector.
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The philosophy underpinning the Steel Manufacturers Association’s conference schedule is similar to the ideology of its mini-mill electric furnace industry membership. The association holds only two events a year, taking pride in embracing a lean operating policy,
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Kevin McCarthy’s varied background in recycling gives him an interesting outlook on where the industry is heading.
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Sometimes, so the saying goes, our success contains the seeds of our destruction. At other times, a phoenix is born out of the ashes. Both have proven to be the case in the scrap industry.
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The design and technology behind Southwire Co.’s award-winning Proof Positive Copper with Trace ID Technology is elegant in its simplicity, but the innovation resolves the two key problems that have left neighborhoods and utilities vulnerable to copper wire theft.
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“Never mind, we’ll do it.” It’s not the most inspiring environmental slogan, but it might be the wave of the future.
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In a previous column, I questioned whether all the easy-to-obtain obsolete scrap like No. 1 heavy melt and plate and structural scrap—the low-hanging fruit—had been picked, processed and sold to steel mills and foundries.
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No matter what city the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) chooses to host its annual convention, the recycling industry’s army of delegates takes over the town.
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Deborah Rudacille’s history of Sparrows Point, told largely through interviews with retired steelworkers, is called Roots of Steel.
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When a consensus for a national policy is lacking on some item of importance, don’t be surprised if a not-for-profit entity steps up to fill the void.
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Lead miner Doe Run Co. hasn’t turned lead into gold quite yet. But Dave Olkkonen, manager of research and technical development, has come close, helping to successfully adapt the electrowinning refining process to lead concentrates.
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Anyone doing business in Asia will sooner or later come across an unfamiliar cultural situation—for example, how to best eat giant braised goose webs.
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Growing tensions between the United States and China have highlighted the West’s increasing dependence on China for rare earth metals.
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Macro trends like demographics, shifts in global wealth and, especially, sustainability will impact the way all business is conducted.
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Public concern over airborne metals and chemicals has been recertified as a hot-button health issue.
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This time they won’t have scrap dealers to blame if the United Kingdom and Argentina start flinging bullets, bombs and Exocet missiles at each other again.
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Polemics about the unsafe handling of U.S. hazardous scrap sent abroad have generally focused on discarded electronics and obsolete ships. A third category may need to be added: lead batteries.
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When a recycling executive comes before town planners with a proposal to open a scrapyard, he or she can expect to be questioned at length about its operations.
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Electronics recycling is stuck in a chronic rut, with revenue from embedded materials insufficient to generate profits for many market segments. Increasingly, television and computer makers have been called upon, or forced by state legislatures, to absorb some of the net costs.
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The words “supply driven” or “supply constrained” seem to be popping up more often in conversations with scrap processors and brokers. Some might argue that it’s just a short-term situation that occurs infrequently. Winter weather can assume the blame—peddlers and small dealers take a break when snow starts falling, while the larger yards are reluctant to operate much of their heavy machinery because equipment breaks down more often in the cold and the snow makes repairing it that much more difficult.
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A low-profile U.S. Environmental Protection Agency program has created an intriguing precedent that may have a ripple effect in regulatory politics.
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The domestic steel industry’s scrap buying practices have become as predictable as a rainstorm on an overcast day. Take, for example, the steel industry’s decision to buy little or no scrap in December.
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Some sources claim that the actions of the United States in the global economy risk a return to a destructive Smoot-Hawley trade policy. These sources aren’t credible. If, indeed, a few fringe observers are advocating policies that will trigger a trade war, they will receive little serious policy attention.
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The official commissioning of a new U.S. Navy vessel named the USS New York raised steel to national visibility in November as Americans were reminded that 7.5 tons of steel cast into the bow of the ship was made from steel recovered from the ruins of the Twin Towers after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
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Subscribers to AMM have read for years of mergers and acquisitions in metals, efforts to consolidate the steel industry and the motives of industry magnates like Lakshmi Mittal, Alexei Mordashov, Wilbur Ross and others.
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Recycling electronic discards can be daunting, involving both hazardous substances and materials theoretically recyclable but not really marketable. Such hurdles can lead to shortcuts that are sleazy or downright illegal.
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Could we be heading for a battle between domestic mills and foreign steelmakers for ferrous scrap and other steelmaking raw materials? It’s a definite possibility.
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In the Cecil B. DeMille epic movie The Ten Commandments, pharaoh Yul Brynner, weary of the plagues put upon Egypt, counters by telling the Jewish slaves that as punishment they must make their same tally of bricks without straw—in effect, ordering them to do more with less.
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Until now, incentives for the average consumer to recycle have been mostly “pays good” or “feels good.” Increasingly, though, we may be moving toward a different approach “Make it increasingly expensive not to.”
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Some scrap buyers and brokers are a little troubled about what steelmakers will melt for the rest of this year. The supply of scrap has not reached the shortage stage, but it has dried up. How can that be when no one was buying much scrap for the first six months of this year?
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Even if it’s too early to say the recession has completely ended for the United States, there’s a growing consensus among economists that we’re past the bottom of the trough. There’s also general agreement that the whopping $787-billion stimulus package, known formally as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), has not done what it was supposed to do get the economy moving.
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The sustainability of our environment and the energy we use to support society are dominant concerns across the globe. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and shrinking availability of petroleum from secure sources have led to focused efforts on policy and technology solutions.
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When Franklin Brown Jr., 75, stepped down as executive vice president of the Copper and Brass Servicenter Association (CBSA) earlier this summer, he had spent twice as many years serving the metals industry as not.
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Former President Ronald Reagan once said that “to make the international trading system work, all must abide by the rules.” He didn’t say some must abide by the rules; nor did he say we should allow our trading partners to bend (or obliterate) the rules without consequences.
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Airborne lead is still a health problem, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tells us. The secondary lead industry still has 21 smelters in the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, so the secondary lead industry must rank first or second as a source or airborne lead, right? Wrong.
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The “Cash for Clunkers” legislation, which provides the owner of an unwanted gas guzzler with a rebate of between $3,500 and $4,500 on a new car, depending on the improvement in gas mileage over their old vehicle, probably won’t be implemented until September.
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When Congress considers creating a new program, consensus on broad goals often conceals dissonant agendas. Working out the details can strain coalitions.
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Domestic steelmakers need to realize that the scrap export market is here to stay and that offshore steel mills in distant lands like Turkey, China and Vietnam are everyday players in the international ferrous scrap game.
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The steel industry is revving up to meet the technological challenges needed on the drive toward a leaner, meaner and cleaner North American automotive industry, evidenced at an industry event this spring.
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China is now the world’s leading industrial producer of carbon dioxide. It is also, as a new report by the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) makes clear, riddled with terrible environmental pollution throughout its steel industry (www.americanmanufacturing.org/assessment-of-china). Despite worsening air and water conditions throughout much of the nation, Beijing has shown a repeated lack of will to impose reasonable emission regulations on provincial and local governments. The bottom line is this looking at current discussions on global climate change, there’s little to suggest that Beijing will address the issue in any effective manner.
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For the third year running, ArcelorMittal SA claimed the title of the world’s largest steelmaker. The Luxembourg-based company’s raw steel output of 103.3 million tonnes—although down more than 11 percent from 2007—was nearly triple that of its nearest rival, Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp.
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The economic slide has been brutal to many industries, among them scrap. Hopes that electronics recycling eventually would become self-sustaining from commodity revenue have faded.
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In their zeal to curb metal thievery, some local police departments may be taking their responsibility to enforce the law to excess.
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Been Down So Long It looks Like Up To Me was the title of a novel written in the 1960s by the late Richard Fariña, perhaps better remembered as the husband and musical partner of Mimi Baez Fariña, sister of folk singer Joan Baez. Too bad the title is already copyrighted. It might make a great description of the current economic outlook, particularly by the more optimistic.
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Given the current downturn, credit insurance can sometimes be useful as an early warning system—even when you don’t receive a check.
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The world’s largest mining convention was not a mother lode of pessimism, as some might have expected considering the majority of participants were junior and intermediate mining companies, many on life-support.
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A year and a half in the making, Ryerson Inc.’s restructuring is positioning the company to focus locally—a focus that will help the Chicago-based metals distributor and processor drive to fill its geographic holes, according to company executives, although that’s only one piece of the multi-point growth plan.
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It may be hard to believe that any industry is beating expectations these days, but the steel industry is - at least in terms of shrinking its carbon footprint. What's more, it has had a big hand in helping customers reduce their own energy use.
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New large outside-diameter spiral-weld pipe mills are trucking right along with big plans to add new tons—market downturn and concerns about overcapacity be damned. Although delays have bogged down some projects, executives remain generally bullish, at least for 2009.
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Recyclers play a unique role in the economy, flanked by sellers of used goods on one side and by trash collectors on the other. All three deal with products no longer wanted by businesses and households. The difference is whether an item can be resold for its original function, as a raw material, or not at all. The economic tailspin that began in late 2008 threatens to redraw some of those boundaries.
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What were our captains of industry and finance doing during their years in the hallowed halls of education when they were supposed to be learning history and its lessons? Cramming for a quiz on discounted cash flow or copying their fraternity brothers’ accounting homework? Or maybe they were skipping class to buy a term paper to get through a useless liberal arts course like history. What does history teach about quarterly earnings and capital expenditures? Who wants to read all that nonsense about the French Revolution all over again? They had had their fill of it in high school.