I’ve had the opportunity to do some traveling these past few weeks visiting with manufacturing prospects, distributors and even the occasional steel mill, as well as to attendees from a speech I gave on global metals markets. Without a doubt, what I kept hearing over and over related to the price of steel and more [...]
With 80-90% of the world’s ferro chrome consumed in stainless steel production it is not surprising the FeCr market has been through a rough time. The fortunes of FeCr producers have in some circumstances been exacerbated by local problems. 45% of the world’s FeCr comes from South Africa where the strong rand, high electricity costs [...]
From the human perspective it is a tragedy, at least 31 people were crushed to death when a 275 meter power station chimney collapsed following a lightening strike in Korba, India. The 1,200 MW power station is being built as part of an expansion of Balco’s (Bharat Aluminium Company) aluminum smelter from 350,000 tons/annum to [...]
Well, the cat is out of the bag so to speak as my husband publicly aired my own misgivings on the subject of free trade. I won’t mention at this juncture when these misgivings started (because that is the subject of another long blog post) but suffice it to say that the rhetoric and in [...]
There are some for whom the adoption of plastic corks and worse, screw tops, on wine bottles has been a painful and distressing experience. Many have been in denial for years as to the benefits of artificial methods to seal wine bottles holding fast to the belief that real wine is only ever sealed with [...]
Silver Institute Executive Director Mike DiRienzo is quoted in a Mineweb article this week extolling the virtues of silver nano technology and explaining how the new applications for silver nano technologies will create a surge of demand for the metal. The basis of his enthusiasm is silver’s long acknowledged ability to disrupt the functioning of [...]
You may have seen these alternative economic indices making their rounds this past week. The men’s underwear index makes for the most entertaining reading of course but it’s the bake bean index reported by ThomasNet that we found most relevant. Originally reported by the BBC, the notion behind bake beans as a surrogate economic indicator [...]
We periodically review the aluminum market but rarely stop to consider the raw material supply side to the industry. As the intermediate stage between bauxite which is mined out of the ground as an ore and refined aluminum sits the intermediate product alumina. Supply of alumina (aluminum oxide) is mostly controlled by the major mining [...]
