Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Defying odds, U.S. steel industry making comeback
It's been a while since I've blogged anything. It's a combination of several factors. Blogger's software has been giving me grief of late, I've been very busy in my home life, I was on vacation, etc. So there are going to be a bunch of catchup articles, things that are actually a month or two old, but only now am I getting to the backlog of articles and publishing them.
So how fitting the first one is about the rebirth of north american steel. Of course, here at Stampingoutaliving, some of the things mentioned in the article have the opposite value for us. For instance, lack of competition and lack of lower cost imports is great if you're a steel company, not so much if you're in a steel-consuming company.
The San Diego Union-Tribune
The U.S. steel industry is enjoying a new era of prosperity less than a decade after crippling production costs and lower-priced imports helped trigger a huge wave of bankruptcies that some thought would leave it permanently tarnished.
Buoyed by sharply reduced employee costs, soaring global demand, dramatic consolidation that has tamped down cutthroat competition and a weakened dollar that has made imports less attractive, steel prices have tripled in the past five years. For the first time in decades, companies operating in the United States have added capacity and workers.
German steel maker ThyssenKrupp is building a $4 billion plant [...]. Nucor has applied for permits to build a $2 billion plant [...]. The Russian giant Severstal recently purchased the Sparrows Point steel plant outside Baltimore [...]
“There hasn't been this much building in 25 to 30 years,” said Michael D. Locker, president of Locker Associates, a steel consulting firm.
So how fitting the first one is about the rebirth of north american steel. Of course, here at Stampingoutaliving, some of the things mentioned in the article have the opposite value for us. For instance, lack of competition and lack of lower cost imports is great if you're a steel company, not so much if you're in a steel-consuming company.
The San Diego Union-Tribune
The U.S. steel industry is enjoying a new era of prosperity less than a decade after crippling production costs and lower-priced imports helped trigger a huge wave of bankruptcies that some thought would leave it permanently tarnished.
Buoyed by sharply reduced employee costs, soaring global demand, dramatic consolidation that has tamped down cutthroat competition and a weakened dollar that has made imports less attractive, steel prices have tripled in the past five years. For the first time in decades, companies operating in the United States have added capacity and workers.
German steel maker ThyssenKrupp is building a $4 billion plant [...]. Nucor has applied for permits to build a $2 billion plant [...]. The Russian giant Severstal recently purchased the Sparrows Point steel plant outside Baltimore [...]
“There hasn't been this much building in 25 to 30 years,” said Michael D. Locker, president of Locker Associates, a steel consulting firm.
Labels: steel
