[TheForge] Re: Price of steel & scrap

[Mike]

Bob wrote:

> It might be a good idea to double the size of your garden this year. 

We've been expanding it a bit every year.  All the topsoil from the
new shop site, f'rgzample, I spread 10" deep on poor sod  to extend
the garden, tore up some roots in another spot while I had the use of
the tractor.

> I think we are in for a hell of a ride.

Yup.  Of course, I've thought that since circa 1968 or so, when I was
-- um -- very young. :-)  Since then I've done some reading about
complex systems and catastrophe theory.  I now think that
extrapolation is misleading and that sometime along about now, give or
take a decade, things are going to get interesting somewhat suddenly.

>> Chinese steel producers are striking deals with foreign suppliers
>> to ensure steady sources for increasingly scarce materials such as
>> iron ore, needed to make basic carbon steel, and nickel, which is used
>> to make stainless steel.

And chromium.  There are only a few commercial sources of chromium for
all the stainless and specialty alloys.  Mainly (IIRC) South Africa
and Russia.

After I posted the bit about coke in Germany, I did a quick Google.
India's steel industry is in a tizzy about coke, too.  How soon a
single shipload will arrive from China is a big deal.

Here in Nova Scotia we closed down our steel mill because it hadn't
been able to compete internationally for years without gov subsidy,
despite the fact that they were sitting on a coal mine.  I always
wished they'd just stop dicking around with competition for Bolivian
rail contracts and turn out a couple of hundred tons of misc. small
bar sizes cheap. :-) Now the coal mine is closed, too, and we have to
order by the bag from away.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer@tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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