[TheForge] Price of steel & scrap

[Peter Fels And Phoebe Palmer]

What no one seems to recognize is that the rise in steel and fuel prices 
we are seeing , are in substantial part, due to the recent, deliberate 
devaluation of the dollar. Bush may say that the national debt doesn't 
matter, but..............Pete F

Mike wrote:

>Recently there was some discussion of the rising price of steel.
>There was a an interesting piece in a recent issue der Spiegel (22 mch
>04) about this.
>
>In Germany, steel makers decided that the price of German
>metallurgical coke was too high and started buying it on the world
>market.  Some came from Poland and S. Africa but most of the market
>coke came from China.  The German coke makers now had no market for
>their product so they closed up their plants and, at least in one
>case [1], sold the equipment to Chinese interests.
>
>Fast forward a few years.  Now the Chinese steel industry is ramping
>up fast, producing something like half the world's steel.  They need
>all the coke they can make so the price of a poorer grade of coke has
>soared and the best grade isn't obtainable at all.
>
>A graph shows the price of 12% ash-content coke more or less steady
>at US$50/tonne from 2000 to late 2002, then trending upward to US$150
>over the next year.  In late 2003, the price turns and goes straight
>up to US$450/tonne by January of this year.
>
>Apparently the Ruhr steel industry is leaning on the government to
>build (subsidize?) a new coke plant.  The availability of coking coal
>is not so tight as that of coke although Germany would still have to
>import it.
>
>Huh.  No wonder the price of scrap is going up, too.  You don't need
>coke and a blast furnace to process scrap.
>
>FWIW,
>- Mike
>
>
>
>[1] Two hundred sixty-seven Chinese in work clothes and hard hats
>    are carefully dis-assembling what was once the pride of the German
>    coal industry: The Dortmund Coke Works.  As recently as three
>    years ago, coking coal was processed here into product suitable for
>    blast furnaces.
>
>    Each of the 2 to 2.5 million pieces is being numbered, dismounted
>    and packed in crates.  By October, what was once the most modern
>    coking operation in the world will be stowed in 4500 containers.
>    Then it will be shipped to Shandong Province in China where it
>    will be reassembled.
>
>  
>