Te counter-intuitive weather of late December 2015 seems very much like an exclamation point to all the economic uncertainty and geopolitical discord we have encountered this year, doesn’t it?
In Williamsville, New York, near Buffalo and ninety miles from Toronto, where I once went running on Christmas morning with the thermometer registering eight degrees, shorts were not an uncommon sight the third week in December. That scene was repeated December 23rd on the ice rink in New York City’s Bryant Park. Meanwhile, heavy snows blanketed parts of Texas and New Mexico.
Does all of this mean that what we thought we knew about how things are “supposed to be” regarding weather are not so? Te short and accurate answer is “no.” Weather, like many things we experience in life, is actually the result of a complex ballet of forces and factors which we can observe and measure, but do not always fully understand. Factors like the Pacifc North American Pattern (PNA) and the Arctic Oscillation (AO), along with its dreaded sometime companion, the polar vortex.
The key to understanding these forces and factors and their effects is close observation, and “connecting the dots.” Once weather analysts connect the dots, they can provide early warning.
This is exactly what we do with and for our members. We work hard to “connect the dots,” to monitor and make sense of the relevant political, legislative, and economic forces that shape the “weather” affecting our businesses and our well-being.
Like the distant weather patterns that afect what we experience when we walk outside, distant and seemingly unrelated events can and frequently do affect trade in steel. Market disruptions, conflicts, strife, border issues and volatile geopolitical developments transcend geographic boundaries, ripple across continents and oceans, and afect what happens in our ports, in our plants, and on our balance sheets.
We accomplish our goal of connecting the dots for our members in a number of ways. For example: We provide a “seat at the table” during significant trade-related policy discussions, negotiations, and other initiatives affecting steel trade. We build, sustain, and enhance partnerships with key public and private sector allies.
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In first 10 months of 2015, deliveries to steel end use segments by European flat steel service centers did increase by +6 % when compared to the same period of 2014.
Comparing October 2015 with October 2014, deliveries have been growing by +4 %, year-on-year.
On the other hand deliveries by European multi-product & proximity steel stockholding distribution turned less positive.
October 2015 deliveries decreased by -2 % when compared to October 2014.
In the first 10 months of 2015 deliveries by this distribution segment were lower by -2 % than during first 10 months of 2014.
Commenting the diverging business developments in the two main steel distribution segments, EUROMETAL Director General, Georges Kirps, pointed out that value adding flat SSC seem to enhance their market position as channel to supply strip mill products to steel end use sectors, mainly automotive and white goods.
Multi-product & proximity distributors are the privileged channel to route long steel products, plates and tubes to end use sectors construction industry, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and yellow goods.
In comparison to shipments of US steel distribution, Kirps added, that in 2015 EU steel distribution deliveries developed in a more positive way than those of their US colleagues, who will note a significant decline in 2015.
Georges Kirps, Director General
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Liberty House tells Kallanish that it has moved a step closer to creating what will be the industry’s first fully-integrated operation, from liquid steel through to finished product and market distribution. The steel and trading group was commenting following its acquisition last weekend of Caparo Tubular Solutions (CTS), based in the UK’s West Midlands (see Kallanish 30 November).
Liberty representatives formally moved into the CTS Oldbury headquarters plant early this week (1 December 2015) “… to join management and workers there in building a new future for the business,” Liberty says. The purchase of the business saves 333 jobs.
Liberty’s owners, the Gupta family, bought Caparo Tubular Solutions – now renamed Liberty Tubular Solutions – from administrators PwC only six weeks after restarting its own rolling mill at Newport, South Wales. This is already producing 50,000 tonnes/month of hot rolled coil for the UK market, Liberty says, based on imported slab. It intends eventually to begin melting domestic scrap with its EAF located on the same site.
Liberty House Group managing director Sanjeev Gupta says that, “… Tubular Solutions is a profitable and sustainable business and we are very excited about the future. There are many natural synergies between our hot rolled coil production and this design, manufacturing and distribution business. By working together these operations can create an integrated and robust new business model that will create value and protect jobs for the long term.”
Gupta and Liberty have an undoubtedly upbeat view of the potential of the UK steel sector at a time when many other steel industry operators are naysayers, both in word and deed. The new business model and – more importantly, the new positivity – is just what the UK steel sector needs, Kallanish observes.
Kallanish
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De Europese Commissie en zijn voorzitter Jean-Claude Juncker willen de economie zoveel mogelijk aanzwengelen en denken daarbij ook aan de kmo’s. Volgens minister-president Geert Bourgeois krijgt Vlaanderen een investeringsportefeuille van 40 miljoen euro toegeschoven. Zowat 700 Vlaamse kmo’s zouden daar hun voordeel moeten uit halen. Het globale plan Juncker heeft een globaal investeringsplan aangekondigd van liefst 315 miljard euro om de economie uit het slop te halen en het aantal investeringen vooruit te stuwen. Dat enorme budget komt bijna volledig van privébedrijven, maar de Europese instellingen stellen zich garant.
Vlaamse kmo’s die denken in aanmerking te komen, moeten langs gaan bij de Participatiemaatschappij Vlaanderen (PMV) dat het Juncker-fonds mag en moet beheren. Het geld is bestemd voor risicofinanciering van kmo’s, maar ook voor infrastructuurwerken, onderwijs, onderzoek & ontwikkeling.
Vandaag geeft minister-president Geert Bourgeois meer uitleg over de modaliteiten van het zogenaamde Juncker-fonds. (KC)
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