Final Thoughts

February 5, 2014

I want to take a moment to thank Mark Bush, General Manager Mobile Operations for SSAB Americas as well as Brent Major of SSAB Americas for their hospitality during our tour of the SSAB Mobile steel facilities as part of our most recent Steel 101 workshop. Our group was impressed with the steelmaking as well as the plate rolling operations at their mill.

We had another highly diverse group of attendees at the Mobile workshop. This has been the norm for our Steel 101 workshop since we began them three years ago. As we mentioned in an article above, our next workshop will be in Dearborn, Michigan at The Henry Hotel and will include a tour of the fully integrated Severstal Dearborn steel mill. We have been to Severstal Dearborn in the past and found their mill to be highly stimulating and worth touring. Class size is limited for this workshop so you will want to register as soon as possible.

The photo to the left is of John Temples (R) and Steve Painter (L) interacting with our Mobile attendees during a group discussion.

Its Thursday – so that means I have moved from Mobile, Alabama to Tampa, Florida so I can cover the Port of Tampa Steel Conference. This is the 25th anniversary of the Port of Tampa conducting their steel conference. If you are in Tampa and want to say howdy, shoot me an email at: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com.

I was talking earlier this evening with one of the analysts who is speaking at the Port of Tampa Steel Conference on Friday. One of the items we discussed was the U.S. Steel announcement of their intention to shut down the blast furnace/BOF at Fairfield and move to an electric arc furnace (EAF). The electric arc furnace being considered will be approximately 1.1 million ton capacity. The focus of the furnace will be to supply their seamless pipe mill. Not being a seamless pipe expert (but remembering learning about the process from Peter Wright during our Steel 101 workshops) – I know enough to realize that the Fairfield mill is a flat rolled mill and seamless pipe is produced from billets (long products). The analyst told me USS makes about 800,000 tons of seamless pipe in Alabama…

Shortly after speaking with the analysts I ran into a manufacturing company who is a customer of the USS Fairfield steel mill. This company buys Galvalume from USS and the wheels were already turning about how the USS change will affect their source of supply. A note to ArcelorMittal – one potential answer for this manufacturing company is to get ThyssenKrupp Steel USA in Calvert, Alabama to actually be able to produce light gauge Galvalume.

During the USS conference call with analysts they indicated their intention to supply their customers utilizing capacity at other facilities. It will be interesting to watch the Southeast markets over the next couple of years as there are a lot of moving pieces with changes at USS, Nucor, ThyssenKrupp, Big River Steel and the addition of ArcelorMittal/Nippon Steel into the market.

One more item discussed with a couple of service centers and one manufacturing company this evening – there are significant adjustments to domestic vs. foreign product mix during the first six months 2014…

As always your business is truly appreciated. Tell your friends about us.

John Packard, Publisher

Learn more about Advertising with Steel Market Update here.

SMU Calendar

Become a subscriber (member)