From the category archives:

Raw Materials

China should get out of steel not strong arm iron ore

July 10, 2009

Things have got serious in the iron ore negotiations in China with spurious ‘espionage’ charges levelled against domestic steel producers and Rio Tinto executives – or here if you don’t have an FT subscription. It’s a stretch to call any iron ore information a state secret, so what might have prompted Chinese officials to take […]

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Where to get European scrap price data

January 19, 2009

A Nerds of Steel reader in Australia wrote recently to ask where to find Turkish scrap prices. As we’re always trying to accelerate readers research and reduce their costs, I am following up with information on good sources of European scrap prices. Subscribers to Steel Business Briefing and Metal Bulletin can find European scrap prices […]

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Where to go to dig up the facts about iron ore

September 25, 2008

There has been a lot of news lately about how the largest iron ore producers want to change the traditional yearly contract negotiations with their biggest customers.  If you are trying to follow what’s going on and you need some background on the iron ore market and history, you can get some answers online through […]

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US Carbon Steel Forecast 2009 Presentation

September 16, 2008

NOTE: There’s an updated (for Q4 2008), revised (in Q1 2009) & expanded version of this presentation here: Here’s a shortened version of a presentation I made last week to the MSCI Economic Summit: Forecast 2009 meeting in Chicago. It’s a great event if you get the chance to go. The essence of what I […]

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Scrap or Pig – Iron is Iron

June 18, 2008

It used to be the case that minimills (scrap buyers) and integrated mills (iron ore buyers) had very different cost structures. Integrated steel producers’ costs were relatively fixed because iron ore and coking coal were sold on an annual contract basis and did not change much year to year. Scrap prices on the other hand, […]

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Drybulk freight rates information sources; the cost of shipping iron ore and coal around the world

April 14, 2008

If you want to understand freight rates, you might first want to go to an industry overview provided by Genco Shipping and Trading Limited It includes a very good description of how different drybulk materials are shipped and what the rates you will find actually mean. You can find current iron ore and coal freight […]

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