Displaying items by tag: Belgium

Belgium: The World Steel Association says that global steel production in the first half of 2020 was 873Mt, down by 6% year-on-year from 929Mt. Global June 2020 steel production also fell, by 7% year-on-year to 148Mt from 159Mt in June 2019 and by 0.7% month-on-month from 149Mt in May 2020. China produced 91.6Mt in June 2020, up by 4.5% from 87.7Mt, corresponding to 62% of global steel production for the month. The sharpest falls occurred in the US, by 35% to 4.7Mt from 7.2Mt, and in France, by 35% to 800,000t from 1.23Mt.

Belgium: The World Steel Association (WSA) forecasts that total global steel consumption in 2020 will be 1.65Bnt, down by 6.4% year-on-year from 1.77Bnt in 2019, due to the impacts of the coronavirus outbreak on steel-intensive industries. The WSA estimated that demand will decline by 17% in developed countries, with the steepest falls in Japan, South Korea and the US, and by 18% in India. China’s steel consumption is expected to rise by 1% due to increased infrastructure spending and a swift post-coronavirus recovery. Construction, a mostly seasonal sector, had already reached full productivity in April 2020.

The WSA expects steel demand to increase by 3.8% year-on-year in 2021 to 1.72Bnt globally. The sharpest recovery is expected to be in developing countries, where the WSA says that total demand will increase by 9.2%, following a fall of 11.6% in 2020.

Belgium: The World Steel Association (Worldsteel) published its Short Range Outlook (SRO) for 2019 and 2020 on 14 October 2019. It estimates global steel demand growth of 3.9% to 1.78Bnt/yr in 2019, slowing to 1.7% in 2020, with a demand of 1.80Bnt/yr. China leads the field with an estimated 7.8% growth to 900Mt/yr in 2019. Worldsteel named high rates of investment in property as a cause, and forecasted a slowdown to 1.0% in 2020, yielding a demand of 909Mt/yr, as a result of China’s continued economic deceleration.

Belgium: The European Commission (EC) has blocked the creation of a joint venture between Tata Steel and ThyssenKrupp. It said that the merger would have reduced competition and increased prices for different types of steel. It added that the parties did not offer adequate remedies to address these concerns.

“Steel is a crucial input for many things we use in our everyday life, such as canned food and cars. Millions of people in Europe work in these sectors and companies depend on competitive steel prices to sell on a global level. Without remedies addressing our serious competition concerns, the merger between Tata Steel and ThyssenKrupp would have resulted in higher prices. So we prohibited the merger to avoid serious harm to European industrial customers and consumers,” said Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

The proposed joint venture would have combined the flat carbon steel and electrical steel activities of ThyssenKrupp and Tata Steel in the European Economic Area (EEA). ThyssenKrupp is the second largest producer of flat carbon steel in the EEA while Tata Steel is the third largest. Both companies are significant producers of metallic coated and laminated steel for packaging applications and of galvanised flat carbon steel for the automotive industry.

Europe: AcelorMittal has received approval from the European Commission (EC) for the sale of selected steelmaking assets to Liberty House Group. The divestment includes ArcelorMittal Ostrava in the Czech Republic, ArcelorMittal Galati in Romania, ArcelorMittal Skopje in North Macedonia, ArcelorMittal Piombin in Italy, ArcelorMittal Dudelange in Luxembourg and several finishing lines at ArcelorMittal Liège in Belgium. The assets are part of a divestment package that AcelorMittal agreed with the EC during its merger control investigation into its acquisition of Ilva. The transaction is expected to close before the end of the first half of 2019.

Belgium: Data from the World Steel Association shows that world crude steel production rose by 4.6% year-on-year to 882Mt in first half of 2018. The association gathers data from 64 countries. Growth was driven by increases in Asia, where crude steel production rose by 5.2% to 614Mt. Production rose by 1.6% to 87.3Mt in the European Union, by 2.4% to 59Mt in the US and by 2.8% to 50.5Mt in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Germany: Loesche says it is continuing its research and development of a process to create a steel slag suitable for cement production following a legal dispute.

The engineering company has worked with the FA Finger-Institut für Baustoffkunde (FIB) at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar on the thermally reductive modification of steel slags for recycling iron and manufacturing ‘steelworks clinker.’ It has developed two procedures for thermally reductive conditioning of BOF (Basic Oxygen Furnace) slag that have been registered for a patent, which largely differ in the respective cooling process for the remaining molten metal. The individual stages of the procedure have already been tried and tested on an industrial scale. Loesche’s partner for the entire procedure is Primetals Technologies based in Linz, Austria, which has industrial-scale plants for reduction and fast cooling based on patented procedures in its product range. The remaining iron (approximately 8 - 10%) that is still in the ‘steelwork clinker’ can then be separated in a Loesche mill. The separation procedure for this, which has also been patented by Loesche, has been in operation for approximately six years to recycle stainless steel from stainless steel slags in a recycling plant in Belgium.

However, following smelting trials conducted with the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) in 2011, Loesche faced a lawsuit regarding the patents for its procedures. The legal uncertainty that this created led to the suspension of further development and implementation of the two procedures for more than three years. The legal dispute was resolved in December 2017. The second conditioning procedure – the fast cooling – was assigned as the sole property of Loesche. A third of the ownership of the first conditioning procedure - slow cooling – was conceded to the BAM, represented by the German government.

Loesche now plans to implement the second procedure into industrial practice.

Belgium: World crude steel production rose by 4.1% year-on-year to 427Mt in the first three months of 2018, according to data from the 64 countries reporting to the World Steel Association. Asia produced 294Mt of crude steel, an increase of 4.6%. The European Union (EU) produced 43.1Mt, up by 0.9%. North America produced 29.5Mt, an increase of 1.9%.

Belgium: Gebr Pfeiffer has received an order from Cemminerals to supply a grinding plant for slag and cement. The plant, in Flanders, will use a MVR 5300 C-6 type mill. The order was taken in December 2016 and the mill is scheduled for commissioning in early 2018.

The Pfeiffer MVR 5300 C-6 slag and cement mill will be used to grind five different cement qualities as well as pure slag to three different fineness degrees. The mill is guaranteed to achieve capacities of 132t/hour pure slag, ground to 5000cm²/g acc. to Blaine, and of up to 200t/hour CEM II, ground to a fineness of 3500cm²/g acc. to Blaine. The mill main drive is designed for an installed power of 4600kW, and the SLS 4750 BC high-efficiency classifier, mounted on top of the MVR mill, enables high material fineness degrees of up to 5000cm²/g acc. to Blaine.

In addition to the MVR mill the contract includes handling equipment, two in-feed devices to enable moist slag and dry clinker to be fed to the mill separately, the plant filter, the plant fan, the magnetic drum separator and all ductwork including chutes, expansion joints and the stack. The scope of supply also includes a hot gas generator for the heating of the mill, as well as all electrical drives, starters, frequency converters and the electrical switchgear.

Belgium: The World Steel Association (WSA) has forecast that global steel demand will return to growth of 0.4% year-on-year to 1494Mt in 2017. This follows a decrease of 3% in 2015 and a predicted decrease of 0.8% to 1488Mt in 2016. The data is part of the WSA’s Short Range Outlook (SRO) for 2016 and 2017 report.

“The economic environment facing the steel industry continues to be challenging with China’s slowdown impacting globally across a range of indicators contributing to volatility in financial markets, sluggish growth in global trade and low oil and other commodity prices. The global steel market is suffering from insufficient investment expenditure and continued weakness in the manufacturing sector,” said TV Narendran, chairman of the WSA. He added that some emerging economies in South and Southeast Asia show resilient growth and along with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) region and the European Union (EU) will support a recovery in 2017.