Page 83 from: October 2013

83October 2013

Ferrous

still 4.9% short of the output recorded
in January-August 2012.
Interestingly, the increase in August
was achieved despite a year-on-year
output reduction for two of Europe’s
leading steel-producing nations, name-
ly Germany (-6.3% to 3.158 million
tonnes) and Italy (-7.5% to 1.088 mil-
lion tonnes). France was a key factor in
the EU-27’s overall production gain
with a year-on-year leap of 21.7% to
1.161 million tonnes, while Spain also
enjoyed a sizeable production increase
of 10.3% to 1.031 million tonnes.
The August upturn in EU production
was dwarfed, however, by the 12.8%
gain posted by China to 66.277 million
tonnes. As a whole, the main Asian
producers upped their output by 8.5%
to 88.862 million tonnes in August
despite South Korean production slid-
ing 13.1% to 4.892 million tonnes.
Across the first eight months of this
year, the same Asian majors registered
a production increase of 5.6% to
706.452 million tonnes, with China
(+7.8% to 521.839 million tonnes),
Japan (+0.9% to 73.15 million tonnes)
and India (+2.5% to 52.926 million
tonnes) more than offsetting the 6.3%
decline in South Korean output to
43.503 million tonnes.
The statistics for the 64 countries
reporting to the World Steel Associa-
tion (WSA) also revealed year-on-year
crude steel production hikes in August
for Ukraine (+4.1% to 2.779 million
tonnes), Brazil (+4.6% to 3.002 million
tonnes) and the Middle East (+10.2%
to 1.952 million tonnes). Of this trio,
however, only the Middle East recorded
a higher output across the first eight
months of 2013 when compared to the
same period last year (+4.2% to
15.177 million tonnes) whereas
Ukraine and Brazil posted declines of,
respectively, 0.6% and 1.4%. The USA
was among those countries to report
production declines for both August
and the cumulative eight-month period
(of, in turn, -2.9% and -5.2%). The
same applied to Russia (-1.9% and
-2.8%), Africa (-5.2% and -2.2%) and
Oceania (-7.1% and -2.4%).

In total, the WSA’s 64 reporting coun-
tries racked up 130.352 million tonnes
of crude steel production in August
2013 for a year-on-year gain of 5.2%;
as a result, year-to-date output was
2.3% higher at 1.051 billion tonnes
compared to the 1.027 billion tonnes
of January-August 2012. In August
2013 itself, the global capacity utilisa-
tion rate was 75.4% – a percentage
point higher than in the corresponding
month of last year but 1.4 percentage
points behind this July’s figure.

Stronger month
Chinese exports of finished steel explod-
ed in August, outstripping the total for
the previous month by almost 1 million
tonnes on the back of relatively low
prices. Latest customs data reveal that
the volumes shipped overseas leapt
almost 20% from around 5.15 million
tonnes in July to 6.14 million tonnes the
following month – the first time the 6
million tonnes barrier has been
breached since the onset of the global
economic downturn in late 2008.
According to figures from the American
Iron & Steel Institute, July was a stron-
ger month for US steel shipments with
the total of almost 8.3 million net tons
representing an increase of 6% from
the previous month and of approach-
ing 5% from the 7.9 million tons
recorded in July 2012. However, ship-
ments across the first seven months of

More than one billion tons of steel
have been recycled by the North
American steel industry since the
Steel Recycling Institute (SRI) was
established in 1988. ‘While recycling
rates for steel products continue to
increase, the most impressive figure
is the overall steel recycling rate of
88%; this rate has exceeded 50%
for more than a half century,’ says
SRI. The organisation’s executive
director Gregory L. Crawford adds:
‘For a quarter century, SRI has served
as a driving force behind growing
the availability of a key resource for
steelmaking processes – steel scrap.’
In 2012, nearly 84 million tons of
steel was recycled across North
America. This total includes over 1.3

million tons of tinplate – ‘the equiv-
alent of 21 billion steel cans’ – with
a recycling rate of 72%, the highest
among packaging materials. Some
16.3 million tons of automotive
scrap was recycled at a rate of
92.5% last year, which equates to
11.5 million vehicles. Recycling also
accounted for some 2.7 million tons
of appliance steel in 2012, for an
estimated rate of 90%. ‘Also, each
year, based on construction and
demolition industry estimates, about
98% of out-of-service construction
plates and beams are recycled and
70% of rebar and other structural
steels are captured for recycling
through demolition and disassem-
bly,’ SRI notes.

China acceded to the World Trade
Organization (WTO) in late 2001 but
continues to sidestep its obligations,
the American Iron and Steel Institute
(AISI) has complained in filing a
45-page document with the US
Trade Representative in which it
strongly urges the American govern-
ment to ‘adopt a more aggressive
strategy that is commensurate with
the scope and severity of China’s
failure to comply’.
Notably, AISI accuses China of intro-
ducing ‘numerous measures to inap-
propriately aid its producers in
securing access to raw materials and
to manipulate raw material prices in
a manner that gives Chinese pro-
ducers an unfair advantage over
their US competitors’. It also high-
lights the fact that Chinese crude
steel production soared 609 million
tonnes between 2000 and 2012 –
an increase ‘made possible, in large
part, by massive government subsi-
dies’. The Chinese government
‘maintains a heavy amount of con-
trol over state-owned steel produc-

ers’, it adds, while continuing to
keep the value of its currency ‘at
artificially low levels that give Chi-
nese producers an unfair advantage
in the US market, the Chinese mar-
ket, and third-country markets’.
Based on ‘an overwhelming amount
of evidence’, the AISI document con-
cludes, ‘China has largely aban-
doned its policy of liberalizing its
economy and instead adheres to a
policy of state capitalism that is anti-
thetical to the principles of free and
fair trade. This trend is a major prob-
lem for American steel producers,
other manufacturers and the US
economy as a whole.’
Kevin Dempsey, senior vice president
of public policy at AISI, comments:
‘Over the last decade, our trade deficit
with China has soared 280%, we
have lost millions of manufacturing
jobs, thousands of factories have been
shuttered and the American steel
industry has been severely disrupt-
ed. The US government must take
much bolder and more imaginative
steps to address this chronic problem.’

Billion reasons to celebrate for SRI

AISI asks US government to get tough
over China

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