What is included in the Tata UK portfolio?
As the race to buy the rest of Tata Steel’s UK business quickens, what will either Liberty House Group or Excalibur Steel Limited get for their money if they take on the whole venture?
The main facility is at Port Talbot, South Wales, now the UK company’s only integrated steelmaking plant. It produces hot and cold rolled strip products and employs 4,000 people. Neighbouring Llanwern, has galvanising and pickling plants and Orb Works in Newport produces electrical steel. These two plants between them have 1,250 employees.
Other Welsh plants are those in Trostre, also in South Wales which produces tinplate with 658 employees, and in Shotton, North Wales where there is a galvanising and colour coating facility employing 700. Building Systems in Caerphilly, South Wales produces roofing and cladding systems for the construction sector with a 200-strong workforce.
Tata’s engineering and speciality steel operations in South Yorkshire in Rotherham and Stocksbridge have a total staffing of 1,700 people equally divided between the two sites. Tube and pipe are produced at mills in Hartlepool in the north-east of England and in Corby in the UK midlands. These plants employ 500 and 550 employees respectively.
Tata also has two research facilities, one located in Rotherham and one based at Warwick University, employing another 200 people in total. The main UK distribution operation is based at Wednesfield again in the midlands, where Tata employs 450 people.
Some of these operations have overseas branches which are not included in the proposed UK package up for sale, Tata Steel tells Kallanish.
GFRP rebars: composites building on a niche
Glass fiber reinforced polymer is gaining space over steel in some applications where corrosion-resistance is key. It won recognition when a fiberglass Disneyland attraction proved stronger than expected during demolition
Longs distributors registered increased sales in Q1: Euromet
Distributors of long products (including rebar, beam and merchant bar) in Europe saw their overall volumes sold during Q1 rise some 6% y-o-y, according to the latest report published by EUROMETAL.
The association tracked the EU28 distribution of long products from main multi-product distributors. It added that, while rebar shipments went up 7% y-o-y and beam shipments 13% y-o-y, merchant bar shipments were down by 8% y-o-y.
While sales volume have recovered somewhat, stocks have continued decreasing, in March reaching a level of 58 days of sales for long products in Europe; down from 62 days in March 2015 and the average of 65 days registered during the whole of last year.
Overall for March, stocks in Europe were registered by EUROMETAL at 67 days of sales for beams, 77 days for merchant bars and 32 days for rebar.
In detail, Germany saw its long product volumes sold by distributors moving down 4% y-o-y in Q1, while the UK and the Netherlands registered a recovery of over 10% y-o-y.
Emanuele Norsa, PLATTS
HFP rebar trade case
Attached you may find a communication which EUROMETAL received from EU DG Trade regarding the HFP rebar trade case.
EU_DG_TRADE_HFP_REBARS_Annex_1_AD619_General_Disclosure_Document
Thyssenkrupp launches online retail shop in Germany
Thyssenkrupp Materials Services, the distribution arm of the German steel group, has started its online retail shop, called Materials4Me, for the German market this week.
The online portal’s catalogue for the German market is offering 11,000 products to small businesses and end-users in small batches and standard sizes.
After the launch of Materials4Me in the UK and Spain, Germany is the newest market of Thyssenkrupp’s digital roll-out. The introduction of portals for existing customers in the Benelux countries, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland is also planned for the first half of 2016, the company said.
The steelmaker sees increasing potential of trading over the internet and is already close to making 10% of its materials sales online. “The question is when we will achieve 30% or 40% of our trading volume through online sales,” Hans-Josef Hoss, member of the executive board of Thyssenkrupp Materials Services, said earlier this year.
Also German steel dustributor Klöckner is shifting its business towards online trade. CEO Gisbert Rühl said that it would focus more on its online platforms for European and US customers than on physical distribution in future.
Laura Varriale, PLATTS
51st edition of worldsteel News
Steel – The permanent material in the circular economy
The World Steel Association (worldsteel) has launched a new publication titled ‘Steel – The permanent material in the circular economy”. This publication highlights how steel enables a sustainable circular economy in which society reduces the burden on nature by ensuring resources remain in use for as long as possible. To get a quick overview of how steel contributes to the circular economy visit our new microsite or go to worldsteel.org.
worldsteel launches image library – ‘Steel never looked so good’
The library showcases the latest compliant images and videos of modern steel production processes from ironmaking to finished products. It is fully searchable and high-resolution images are downloadable for free editorial use.The images and videos have been commissioned by worldsteel, produced by Getty Images, and shot by leading photographers and videographers.
Read more…
Steel Safety day – 28 April 2016
worldsteel has announced its third annual Steel Safety Day. Ahead of Steel Safety Day worldsteel is requesting all its members and the wider steel industry to carry out an extensive safety audit on the five most common causes of incidents. This year’s Steel Safety Day focuses on ‘Falling From Height’.
Read more…
worldsteel Short Range Outlook 2016/2017
worldsteel released its Short Range Outlook (SRO) for 2016 and 2017. It forecasts that global steel demand will decrease by -0.8% to 1,488 Mt in 2016 following a contraction of -3.0% in 2015. In 2017, it is forecast that world steel demand will return to growth of 0.4% and will reach 1,494 Mt.
Read more..
worldsteel proposes key principles on excess capacity and structural adjustment in the steel sector
On Monday and Tuesday 18 & 19 April 2016, representatives of government and industry met in Brussels. The OECD is a useful multilateral platform for discussion between government and industry on topics of importance to the steel industry.
Read more…
worldsteel announces steelChallenge-10 world champions
worldsteel has announced the new world champions of the 10th steelChallenge. The winners competed for the global title in the Industry and Student categories. The task was to produce an experimental grade of automotive steel that focuses on the chemical composition of nickel, chromium and molybdenum. Check out who won the competition this year.
Read more…
Polish steel consumption shows steady growth in near term
Poland’s apparent steel consumption for 2015 reached 12.5 million metric tons, up by 1.6% year-on-year, the highest result in 12 years, Piotr Sikorski, the marketing and PR director at Polish Union of Steel Distributors (PUDS), said at the EUROMETAL Central European regional meeting in Prague this week.
The country should register further growth this and next year with finished steel consumption expected to reach 12.8 million mt and 13.1 million mt respectively, Sikorski noted.
From the 12.5 million mt of finished products used last year 6.9 million mt were flat products, 4.6 million mt longss and 1 million mt of tubes and hollow sections. This year apparent steel consumption of flats should inch up to 7.1 million mt, while longs usage should be at 4.7 million mt.
Construction remains the main consumer, accounting for 44% of the total, followed by metal products (16%), machinery (10%), tubes (9%) and automotive (8%), the PUDS representative said.
Rising consumption seems to be benefiting importers more than local producers, as the country’s imports grew steadily from 5.5 million mt in 2009 to 9.1 million mt in 2014 and dipped only 0.1 million mt last year (to 9 million mt). The imports outpaced the exports which grew from 4 million in 2009 to 4.9 million mt last year.
Imports are dominated by flat products, representing 65-66% of the total in the last three years. The EU countries remain the main trading partners for Poland although non-EU states are still significant, accounting for 34% of the total imports, mostly from the CIS.
Last year imports from Russia jumped 37% y-o-y, to over 600,000 mt. At the same time, imports from Ukraine contracted 18% y-o-y to slightly over 800,000 mt from over a million in 2013. Imports of long products from Belarus, doubled last year, to approach 300,000 mt. China remains less relevant for the Polish market, although volumes are growing, to around 150,000-160,000 mt in 2015, 9% up y-o-y.
Wojtek Laskowski, PLATTS
EUROMETAL PRAGUE: EU mulls probe into wire rod from 4 countries
The EU may start an anti-dumping probe into wire rod imports from Belarus, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine, participants at the Eurometal Central Europe meeting in Prague said on Tuesday April 19.
The European steel association, Eurofer, has started collecting evidence of dumping from the four countries and is preparing to make a decision on filing the complaint to the European Commission, Steel First understands.
“The rumours about the possible anti-dumping investigation into imported wire rod have been circulating in the market for about two weeks. It seems to be part of the EU strategy to become more [protectionist] when it comes to cheap imports,” a trader told Steel First on the sidelines of the conference in the Czech Republic capital city.
“Eurofer has not sent any official complaints or other papers to the EC yet, but the discussion is going on within Eurofer,” another trader said at the same event.
Eurofer declined to comment.
Growing volumes
The monthly average of wire rod imports into the European Union jumped by 23% year-on-year to 139,000 tonnes in 2015, according to the latest data from Eurofer. And in the first two months of 2016, average import levels of the material reached 144,000 tpm.
Monthly average wire rod exports from Ukraine to the EU have increased by 24% year-on-year to 31,000 tonnes last year, and reached 35,000 tpm in January-February 2016.
Belarus exported an average of 10,000 tpm of wire rod to Europe in 2015, after no shipments to the EU in 2014, with the figure jumping to 15,000 tpm in January-February this year.
Russian steelmakers, meanwhile, saw their average exports of the product to Europe increase by 89% year-on-year to 17,000 tpm in 2015. However, average sales from Russia in January-February this year fell to 11,000 tpm.
Wire rod imports from Turkey averaged 10,000 tpm in 2015, up by 17% year-on-year, while in the first two months of this year the average has dropped to 3,000 tpm.
The EC initiated an anti-dumping probe into rebar from Belarus in late March this year, and imposed provisional anti-dumping duties on high-fatigue performance (HFP) rebar imported from China in January.
Nina Nasman in London contributed to this report.
By Maria Tanatar from Steel First.
Brussels Economic Forum, 9 June 2016: Registration is now open!
Registrations for the Brussels Economic Forum 2016 are now open.
Please visit the BEF website and register online.
We are delighted to inform you that the 5th Annual Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa Lecture will be given by ECB President Mario Draghi.
Don’t miss it!
| Date | 9 June 2016 | |
| Venue | Flagey – Place Sainte-Croix, 1050 Bruxelles |
Meeting of Main Steel EU Distributors & Flat SSC in Frankfurt (DE)
You are kindly invited to attend the EUROMETAL Meeting of Main EU Steel Distributors & SSC to be convened in Frankfurt on 21.June 2016.
EUROMETAL is proud and honored to announce that expert speakers accepted to be present at the meeting and participate in the debates about key issues facing steel distribution and SSC.
Key issues to be debated are among others:
– Steel distribution and SSC: How to weather the steel crisis and structural changes
– Basic trends and developments in key end use sectors, like automotive
– The impact of spreading trade cases on steel supply chains
– A project to improve technical efficiency of steel supply chains
– Competitiveness of EU steel distribution and SSC: latest available benchmarks
In the attachments you may find your invitation to the meeting, including a registration form, as well as a brochure of Roland Berger about Weathering the Steel Crisis
Emmanuel Bonnaud, partner at Roland Berger, Paris, will be a key note speaker to the meeting.
Please note that on 21. June 2016, from 10.00-12.00 Hrs we will convene a meeting of EUROMETAL Presidency at same location.
With kind regards,
Georges Kirps
Director General EUROMETAL