September, 18 2005
MOU signed by VSP & NMDC for sponge iron plant at Chattisgarh
A MoU has been signed by the Rastriya Ispat Nigam Limited RINL and National Mineral Development Corporation NMDC for setting up a pellet & sponge iron plant in Chattisgarh.
This venture will open up opportunities for value addition in Chattisgarh enabling NMDC to obtain additional mining leases and also meet the enhanced requirements of RINL in view of its expansion.
Essar Steel shows good results
The Essar Steel Limited's thrust on total integration, backed by technology and focus has yielded excellent results, its Chairman Shashi Ruia said in his speech delivered at the 29th Annual General Meeting at Hazira on Saturday.
He said revenues for the year at Rs 6,121 crore were up by 65 per cent over last year and profit after tax was close to Rs 600 crore.
He said the company has completed two major acquisitions HyGrade Pellets and Steel Corporation of Gujarat which were the final steps towards becoming a fully integrated steel producer. "The acquisitions have been financed without increasing the debt and this will have a positive impact on the company's bottom line in the coming year and make us the largest integrated steel producer in western India. With our expansion plans we will become the largest producer of flat steel products in the country", he added.
He said Essar Steel's current capacity of three million tonnes per annum will go to 4.6 million tonnes by the end of this fiscal year.
India to push for concessions at OECD
The Indian government will push for a higher subsidy of 5-10% of turnover of domestic steel companies and scrapping of limits on capacity expansion in its new draft proposal for international steel agreement proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD.
According to steel ministry sources, the new set of liberal proposals was being fine tuned and would be submitted to the grouping of developed countries soon. The proposals are in line with the thinking that unlike in the developed countries, steel capacities in developing countries were still low, requiring further expansion before a cap is prescribed. The steel ministry was planning to ask OECD not to recommend a cap. Alternately, India may agree for a higher limit of 5-10% of total turnover of a steel company as subsidy
OECD is in the process of arriving at a multilateral consensus leading to signing of an international steel agreement. To be incorporated in WTO negotiations at a later stage, the agreement is an effort by the developed countries to discipline the global steel business that is marred by inconsistencies.
Mr Wilbur Ross seeks success in auto parts
Mr Wilbur L Ross Jr, the man who recently built up ISG and sold to Mittal Steel has set his sights on the auto industry. Mr Ross, the 67 year old New York based financier who specializes in restructuring broken businesses, wants to build up a collection of downtrodden auto suppliers and transform them into one of the world's largest auto parts companies.
He said that they would avoid the current pitfalls of Detroit, where suppliers seem to be tumbling like dominoes into bankruptcy, by being more globally diverse than competitors and by not relying too heavily on a single automaker for business. "We have a clear vision of what we would like to accomplish" Mr Ross said. "Time will tell whether we are able to achieve that. We do think that size matters. We do think that geographic diversity matters. If that produces the largest company or one of the largest, it probably is not a difference that makes a lot of difference. But scale is important."
In recent months, WL Ross & Co., his investment group, bought a stake of more than 25 percent in Oxford Automotive, a small French supplier that recently emerged from bankruptcy. His group has also been buying up the debt of Collins & Aikman, a bankrupt supplier in Troy, Mich., that makes everything from dashboard instrument panels to carpets. Ross' group is bidding on the company's European operations and plans to bid on its American operations. His group already owns majority stakes in two Asian auto suppliers, Nikko Electric and Ohizumi. These investments are just the beginning, Ross said.
Baosteel sets new output target for 2008
Top management at Baosteel Group, China's largest steel manufacturer, unveiled their new development plan to increase output to 30 million tons of
crude steel by the end of the year 2008. The information was released by Baosteel Group Chairwoman Ms Xie Qihua at the 20th anniversary of company's official start of operations on Thursday.
According to an estimate by the group's GM Mr Xu Changjiang, the group will turn out over 23 million tons of crude steel by the end of this year and the revenue of steel and related businesses will reach $14.48 billion
To add additional 7million tonnes capacity during 2006-2008, there are two ways, M&A in Shanghai and green field projects or acquisitions in southern regions, where the demand for iron products outstrips the total supply.
Currently, the annual supply of steel products in South China's Guangdong Province is 7 million tons, with its total consumption surpassing 28 million tons.
Baosteel is applying to the relevant government departments to build a new steel factory in Zhanjiang, a coastal city in Guangdong. Some insiders believe that the annual production of the new Zhanjiang factory will reach 20 million tons at full capacity.
There have also been reports that the Guangzhou Iron & Steel Co Ltd is in talks with Japan's steel giant JEF to construct a 10 million ton capacity steel mill, which does not conform to the overall development policies for China's iron and steel sector heading for consolidation
Executive VP Mr Luo Bingsheng of China Iron & Steel Association believes that in future blueprint for the sector, there will be four major steel giants across the country merged Anshan Iron & Steel Corp and Benxi Iron & Steel Corp in China's northeastern region, merged Capital Iron & Steel Company and Tangshan Iron & Steel Company in northern region, Baosteel Group with M&A in eastern and southern region and restructured Wuhan Iron & Steel Company in central southern and southwestern region.
Battle for Vkovice isn't over
Mittal Steel, the world's largest steel enterprise, hasn't given up its quest to become the new owner of Vkovice Steel. The Czech government excluded Mittal from the privatization of the Ostrava based steel manufacturer in March on the grounds that a pricing dispute between it and Vkovice's state-owned controlling company Osinek violated certain terms of the proceedings.
Mittal has since taken numerous steps to gain admittance to the privatization, including threatening to cut the supply of vital pig iron between its subsidiary Vysokpece Ostrava VPO and Vkovice. The government, however, hasn't budged from its position and has announced its intention to sell Vkovice to the Evraz Group of Russia for 7.05 billion Kč, effectively ending the privatization. The move prompted Mittal to place a last-minute offer of 9 billion Kč, for which government hasn't responded
Mr Ondra Otradovec, director of M&A for Mittal Steel recently spoke to local press about the company's desire to buy Vkovice. Mittal Steel would like to control and operate both companies, VPO and Vkovice Steel as their relationship is very close, VPO being the exclusive supplier of pig iron to Vkovice and if Mittal Steel doesn't get Vkovice, the new owner Evraz may prefer to source pig iron from its own plant in Russia resulting in loss of one third production of VPO
It is also reported that he said We are considering some investments for the Czech and Polish market. These would be fairly substantial investments catering to the automotive industry in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't want to draw a parallel between our investment plan and the privatization, but it is fair to say that the approach of the Czech government has not been terribly friendly, and therefore we have to see where is the best place for us to invest, in the Polish market or in the Czech market
Second Danieli 1.5 ml tons slab caster ordered by Baosteel
Danieli has a new contract to supply Baosteel with a slab caster in an order received just six months after an earlier assignment for slab caster at the same Shanghai facility of Bao Steel
Danieli Davy Distington will supply to Shanghai No.3 Steel with a single strand machine capable of producing over 1.5 million metric tons per year of slabs in special steels; structural steels; and grades for pressurized vessels, boilers and shipbuilding applications.
Slab sizes will range in thickness from 200 to 250 mm. Widths will run form 1,500 to 2,300 mm.
The machines design details include vertical curved design with a vertical length exceeding 2.6 m, a 9.5 main radius with a continuous bending / unbending roll diagram, top feeding dummy bar, complete breakout prevention system with thermal mold mapping, state of the art INMO mould with in line width adjustment during casting, hydraulic oscillator, optimum type segments, designed for the Dynamic Soft Reduction process, air mist secondary cooling controlled by a dynamic model and complete automation system including predictive models for Liquid Pool Control (LPC), a Solidification process for Dynamic Soft Reduction (DSR) and Dynamic Secondary Cooling (DSC) system
CVRD sticks to its Canico offer
Brazilian mining giant CVRD CEO Mr Roger Angelli has confirmed that CVRD stands by its initial bid of C$790 million for Canadian nickel company Canico Resource Corp. CVRD has announced an offer to buy Canico, which owns the big Onca Puma nickel project in Brazil's Para state, on last Thursday. Mr Agnelli said that CVRD has 60 days to make a formal offer after it has informed Canico's shareholders of the bid details.
The Brazilian subsidiary of Canada's Inco Ltd., Canico's biggest shareholder with a 13 percent stake, said other bidders may make higher offers.
"The market has already given a reply to CVRD's offer. The market speaks louder than anybody else and has indicated that a fair price could yet be arrived at," Inco Brazil Ltda President Joe Griebel told press which is the world's No.2 producer of nickel
When asked about possible rival bidders, Mr Agnelli said he didn't want to speculate about possible names. Analysts have mentioned Canadian nickel producer Falconbridge, and Inco Ltd., the world's second biggest nickel miner, as possible bidders. Mr Agnelli said that CVRD's bid, which represents a 29 percent premium to Canico's volume-weighted average trading price in the past 30 days, was unsolicited but not hostile because it amounts to a fair price for Canico shareholders.
Mr Agnelli said that CVRD could be producing 100,000 tonnes of nickel in four years time, making it one of the world's five largest nickel producers.
If the acquisition is completed, Canico would be CVRD's first purchase of a foreign company since its unsuccessful attempt last year to take control of Falconbridge, then known as Noranda Inc.
Handan Steels CR Galvanized Line commissioned
Handan Steels galvanized line, the fifth similar type facility in the country, successfully completed hot commission on September 8, with annual capacity of 358,000 tons.
The line was supplied by VAI for its core components and adopted USX process to produce 0.25-2mm materials used for color coating processing, construction, auto and home appliance industries.
5 Chinese firms eye iron ore mining in Philippines
Five state owned Chinese companies have identified areas in the Philippines for their iron ore exploration projects with an estimated potential investment of over $250 million. The areas they have identified are Tarlac, Bulacan, two in Zamboanga and Camarines.
The interest of mining in the country followed after the Supreme Court has ruled the constitutionality of the Mining Act of 1995 allowing full foreign-ownership in large scale mining projects.
Mineral exploration has also become attractive with soaring prices of metals and China is aggressive in exploring mining sites overseas because of its huge mineral requirement particularly steel.
Bao Steels auto grade steel accounts for 45% of domestic share
After many years of development in auto sheet, Baosteel has boosted its brand names from initial 10 to the current 193, steadily accounting for 45% of domestic market share for a long time.
Its high quality brands have been applied to medium and high end vehicles such as Audi A6, Passat B5 and Buick, and part of materials been exported to overseas suppliers like Fort and Fiat.
Schnitzer Steel names head of metal recycling business
Schnitzer Steel Industries Inc has announced the appointment of Mr Don Hamaker to the newly created position of President of its Metals Recycling Business, and a Vice President of Schnitzer Steel Industries Inc.
Mr Hamaker will have lead responsibilities for all Schnitzer scrap metal recycling facilities. This will include Schnitzer's existing eleven wholly owned west coast yards, the various scrap recycling facilities Schnitzer will take ownership and full control of once its separation from all the Hugo Neu joint ventures is final, including seven facilities in New England that formerly were part of the Hugo Neu Schnitzer joint venture operations. Also, Hamaker will assume leadership of all future metals recycling business segment acquisitions as Schnitzer continues its growth strategy.
Mr Hamaker is well known in the scrap metal industry, with almost twenty years experience in scrap management positions at Hugo Neu Corporation, including serving as President since 1999. As President of HNC, Hamaker oversaw all company operations.
Schnitzer also announced that Mr Pat Christopher, with fifteen years of scrap metal operations experience, including Vice President of Operations for Hugo Neu Corporation, would also be joining the company as Vice President of Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc., with responsibility for Schnitzer's newly acquired east coast metals recycling facilities, including those which will be acquired as a result of the separation from Hugo Neu Corporation.
Transport shortage blamed for declining mining output in Iran
Managing director of Markazi Iron Ore Company said that lack of transport facilities has caused a remarkable decrease in the volume of mines extraction output.
Iranian ports are yet to be fully capable of loading and unloading of minerals, Mr Dehestani stated, adding that domestic customers would, therefore, prefer to import their demands. You can import iron ore from Brazil at the same cost as you order iron ore to be transported from Bafq to a southern port, he uttered.
Three injured in explosion at Wheeling Pittsburgh
Three workers were injured at Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel's electric arc furnace and suffered minor injuries
Company spokesman Jim Kosowski says the explosion was caused by hot slag coming in contact with water. The electric arc furnace shut down for about four hours and it went back online late Friday night.
Adriana signs MoU for Otelnuk Lake iron deposit
Adriana Resources Inc has announced it has entered into a MoU with Bedford Resource Partners Inc to earn a 100% interest in the Otelnuk Lake iron deposit located in northeastern Quebec. The MOU provides that the parties will negotiate a definitive agreement subject to satisfactory due diligence by the Company and satisfactory review of a National Instrument compliant report. The definitive agreement is also subject to all applicable regulatory approvals.
Watts, Griffis and McOuat Limited, a Toronto based international consulting geological and engineering firm, with considerable experience and expertise in the evaluation of iron deposits, has been engaged to carry out a site visit, gather and analyze independent samples and prepare an initial technical review of the property. The main purpose of the review will be to determine and recommend to the Company, an appropriate work plan and budget
The property is located 170 km north of the town of Schefferville, which once served as a centre for the iron ore mining and processing operations of the Iron Ore Company of Canada. The terminus of the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railroad, a common carrier, is located in Schefferville. The property, consisting of 139 mining claims totaling 6,702 hectares in area
The Otelnuk Lake property was first explored in the early 1950s during the original Labrador Trough exploration boom.
State grants permit to Lee Ranch for surface coal mine in Mckinley
The state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department has granted the Lee Ranch Coal Company permission to operate a coal mine in McKinley County. The permit issued for the El Segundo Surface Coal Mine includes some 15,000 acres of state and private surface and mineral ownership. The state says the permit was the first one issued for a new coal operation in more than five years.
Lee Ranch Coal Company expects to mine 102 million tons over 30 years. The coal will be transported from the mine via railroad. Lee Ranch will be required to reclaim the land disturbed by mining activities.
