Posted on 08/15/2007 10:13:47 AM PDT by Toddsterpatriot
The global steel industry is on the hunt for homes for a new generation of steel mills. Low-cost places like Ukraine, Russia, Brazil and India stand to benefit from investments to satisfy the world's growing appetite for steel.
Also set to benefit: The U.S. This month, big construction machinery is felling trees and leveling the earth outside Mobile, Ala., to make way for a 3,500-acre stainless- and carbon-steel mill being built by Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG. The $2.7 billion mill, which is expected to be up and running by 2010, will make and process 4.5 million tons of steel, making it the largest new steel facility built in the U.S. in the past four decades, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, a trade group.
Next month, another new steel mill, SeverCorr, a minimill operator outside Columbus, Miss., will start melting its own steel for the first time. SeverCorr, a joint venture between Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal and a team of American steel executives, aims to produce 1.5 million tons annually.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Ping!
They’re building a stainless plant in Alabama, well outside of the rust belt.
Good news, we need that kind of reinvestment here.
Amazing what a low dollar can do.
In Ohio we might be getting a Russian steel plant, but I suspect they’ll chose a low tax right to work state instead, and I can’t blame them.
ThyssenKrupp has a local warehouse here in Houston. As a matter of fact, we buy some of their round bar. They are fairly competetive, but the cost of Nickel is so high right now, most of these raw material suppliers are one in the same relative to their pricing.
When foreigners buy land and buildings in the US, it's a plus for the Capital Account. The foreign money traded for dollars to pay for the deed will end up buying foreign goods.
Bottom line: a growing trade deficit creates American jobs.
My wife’s town of Alchevsk in the eastern Ukraine has a huge steel mill and a huge chemical plant that produces coke for the steel mill, fertilizer, and other bulk products. During the transition years after the break up of the Soviet Union, the workers were not paid with currency for months on end. But somehow the plant managed to survive. If these two factories closed up the town of Alchevsk would become a ghost town as have other towns in Ukraine’s rust belt.
Maybe I’d flunk Economics 101, but why is it that we have Russian steel mills and German steel mills setting up in the US? Where are the American steel companies? Seems to me that if the economy is right for foreign interests to build their factories here, American companies ought to be able to make a go of it. Are the foreign interests getting a better deal from our government than our domestic companies?
Keep the Labor Cartel (aka Unions) out of it and it has a good chance of success.
Carolyn
Remember when US Steel was in operation providing over 50% of our needed steel. Then the EPA closed down the heavy plants because they burned coal.
Yessiree, globalization sure is good for America!
Briminggham has long been a steel production center --- in fact is was called 'The Pittsburgh of the South." It qualifies as "Rust Belt".
There were a lot of factors to that happening though, not the least of which was the unions. They did as much or more to guarantee we imported steel from our enemies abroad than the EPA did.
When I was in 2nd grade, we had spent a lot of time in social studies learning about various Latin American countries. Seemed like every damned one of them had steel mills, and every damned one of them was called the Pittsburgh of Chile or Bolivia, or whatnot. It still bugs me....
Why does it bug you?
They have money to invest and see a good market to invest in.
Where are the American steel companies? Seems to me that if the economy is right for foreign interests to build their factories here, American companies ought to be able to make a go of it.
They're right here.
Over 120 million tons of US steel capacity.
LOL! I dunno — it just always did. The Pittsburgh of Ecuador? Bleah. ;-)
Maybe this is why they’re building in the South.
Good point. Seems nowadays, we are totally reliant upon foreign companies starting companies on our soil, and we are always so thankful for them giving us jobs.
Same place as the American car makers. Unions + EPA + Poor Management + asbestos litigation = opportunities for foreign companies.
The foreign companies are not burdened with EPA cleanup costs, union contracts, legacy retiree benefits, etc.
That’s why their in Bama!
Sounds like good news, but coming from the “Business Socialist” Wall Street Urinal...I am going to hold off on the celebration at this time.
I have no problem w foreign companies building and operating factories on US soil....however, there is not the re-investment in America that an American company can provide. Most of those profits from Thyssen-Krupp will head back to Germany, and not be reinvested in the US. It would be nice if those profits stayed in Mobile and not sent to Essen
Hmmmm, where to steel tariffs fit into this?
lol
...sorry...just my sarcastic humor
The foreign companies still have to comply with EPA regulations. However all the other legacy costs and the union/tax situation in the northeast/midwest don't apply for them when they do business in the Rising South. The politicians really need to do some serious soul-searching in coming to grips with exactly why almost all the large cities of that region have seen their populations decimated in the past 50 years. Look at http://www.census.gov/population/documentation/twps0027/tab18.txt. Then go look up their latest data at http://www.infoplease.com/us/census/top-50-cities-2006.html or at census.gov.
There's no such thing as a free lunch and that applies to currency devaluation.
You are effin' hallucinating. That's what 3rd word nations do. An industrialized nation builds and owns its own steel mills
But you have no pride in America so you have no idea that real nations with real pride own their own steel mills. Thus the profits go to Americans not some damn foreigners
Then you should have a problem with it. Americans should own our steel mills and the profits go to Americans. Capitalism is all about making a profit so I resent it when a factory on US soil is sending profits to Germany or Russia
Damn foreigners aren’t allowed to own stock in US steel companies? I had no idea.
True but one could argue we are simply taking away the free lunches we gave the rest of the world with our prior (too) strong dollar policy.
Weak currencies are a sore spot with me, probably because politicians love them so much. They can goose an economy, but there are better ways to promote economic growth.
Building to current standards is different than trying to clean up a hundred years of pollution and retrofit old plants.
all the other legacy costs and the union/tax situation in the northeast/midwest don't apply for them when they do business in the Rising South.
Your north-south comparison doesn't really work with steel. If that were the case, Birminham would still have a viable steel industry. But the new mills aren't going where the unions were strong.
Ironic, isn't it? That's the area that needs stainless the most. :-)
Realistically, it's being built in a state that isn't heavily unionized. They want the operation to remain profitable for a while. Can't do that in Michigan or Ohio due to the closed-shop pro-union atmosphere.
So line up some financing and build one.
The American steel companies are saddled with expensive union contracts and pensions, and loads of "contaminated" 'brownfield' properties that cannot be developed or rebuilt without hugely expensive government-mandated cleanups.
If they close an old, obsolete plant, they have to pay to clean it up. If they rebuild, they have to pay to clean it up. If they open a new plant, even in another state, they have to use union labor. It's in their financial best interest to run the old plant into the ground and then file for bankruptcy, since that's the only way out of the expensive mess they're in.
You whine if we buy foreign steel and now you whine when foreigners hire Americans to make steel here. Why all the whining?
It's called 'stock'. You should look into it sometime.
L
Locked into contracts with the unions. It's the same situation for the auto manufacturers...foreign companies can start plants that aren't tied to union labor. If a US company builds a new plant they have to use union labor.
You guys aren’t worth responding to. You have no American pride.
Not really true. Birmingham's economy has diversified over the last 30 years and is no longer tied to the steel industry. UAB has turned Birmingham into a top tier medical town. If you get sick in the south, Birmingham is the place to go.
I'm just guessing, but maybe because they don't have to prop up the ancient Unions the old steel mills had to deal with?
Nice and Close to provide steel to that new Hyundai Plant in Montgomery... and those other car plants opened and opening down that way.
Good to see some investment in the US.... pity its all by foreign corps.
Who’s already marked for assassination.... Or at the very least his name is...
Who’s already marked for assassination.... Or at the very least his name is...
I think it has as much to do with the invention of air-conditioning as anything else. Seriously.
Nope, just domestic execs are flat out sold on the idiotic offshoring trend... Management, especially middle managers are sheep... they jump on whatever trend the press tells them to.. no matter what the long term effects will be.
Nucor, is (unless they have changed) is a steel recycler if memory serves, they aren’t smelting new steel, but recycling old steel.
Nucor, is (unless they have changed) is a steel recycler if memory serves, they aren’t smelting new steel, but recycling old steel.
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