Day: 23 September 2020

The Moroccan authorities have announced the application of safeguard measures on imports of welded pipe, following a period of consultation initiated in October 2019.

According to a statement seen by Kallanish, the safeguard duties will amount to 25% on all imports, excluding those coming from developing countries, according to WTO rules. The duration of the measure is set at three years and the duties will reduced by 1% each year.

The products subject to the new measures are welded pipe under HS codes 7306.19.10.90; 7306.19.99.00; 7306.30.10.99; 7306.30.99.00; 7306.50.10.90; 7306.50.99.00; 7306.61.10.00; 7306.61.90.00; 7306.69.10.00; 7306.69.99.00; 7306.90.10.90 and 7306.90.99.00.

During the investigation, authorities determined that imports of such products negatively impacted the performance of local suppliers. In 2019 these imports reached almost 35,000 tonnes, more than double the levels seen annually during 2015-2018.

Voestalpine’s Metal Engineering division has commissioned a new, fully automated continuous caster, with an annual production capacity of 1 million tonnes, Kallanish learns from the company.

The division at voestalpine’s Donawitz site produces high-grade steels for processing into special rails for railway infrastructure, premium wires for the automotive industry, and high-quality seamless tubes for oil & gas exploration.

It spent around €90 million ($105m) on the new caster, which it says will allow the group to make even higher-purity steels with optimal surface properties. For example, cracks caused by extreme stresses on rail surfaces can be prevented through the use of homogenous material structures, it says.

The CC4, as it is called, replaces a caster that had been in operation for 40 years, and fully complies with all Industry 4.0 standards, voestalpine emphasises.

The facility was supplied by Primetals and can produce round blooms with a diameter of 230mm and rectangular blooms with a cross-section of 270x360mm. It is designed so that it can also produce a format of 440x330mm. It will be able to process rail steels, case-hardening steels, machining steels, feedstock for seamless steel tubes, heat-treated steels, spring steels, and various other sorts.

Italian long products output performed slightly better compared to flat products during January-August, according to the latest figures published by local steelmakers association Federacciai.

During the first eight months of the year, longs output reached 6.79 million tonnes, down -16.2% year-on-year; flats production was down almost -21% to 6.17mt, Kallanish notes from Federacciai.

In August alone longs output recovered by over 10% y-o-y, while the production of flat products continued to remain some -3.5% y-o-y below the levels of August 2019. This confirms that the sector has not yet recovered completely following the stops implemented during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Italian crude steel output recovered by almost 10% y-o-y in August to 939,000t, but the overall aggregated figure for January-August remained down -17% y-o-y at 12.7mt, Federacciai reports.