Redcar Steel plant

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here we have the latest casualty of the climate change act.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-34387927

even the Guardian are saying it's energy costs killing it.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/16/ta...

how much longer can this crap go on for?

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but apparently we can spend some £6Bn on more climate change crap in Africa etc?

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/608518/fore...

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Berw said:

Having worked in Asia for half my life I can tell you the last thing you want is to compete with India and China. the whole idea as spouted by Blair is rubbish there is no way you can compete. Obviously European labour cost is higher as is employment cost in general, but I don't think that's the issue, efficiency in Europe counters much of this. HSE legislation Environmental, pollution, waste disposal, planning restrictions etc or the lack of it gives a huge advantage, fair competition with USA Germany is one thing, but if you want jobs for your kids you need to stop this idea of competing with Asia and close the door. I have property in the UK, Norway, Malaysia and Indonesia, my views don't come from the Daily Mail, in Indonesia we are close to ship yards, there is no way Europe can compete. The Japanese, Americans and Koreans don't try to compete with China they just close the door.

to a point, you are right.

it really depends what the subject is though, steel is a hard one, as the costs are predominantly energy and transport, not so much labour.

this becomes more apparent the higher up the steel grades you go, just try buying specialist steels these days ...

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crankedup said:

Collapse in steel orders, high energy costs. Who the heck would want to buy into that! Exactly go bust.

very short sighted view...

look what happened the last time we shut most of what was british steel down...

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crankedup said:

Nobody can be more keen than I to see our industries grow and thrive, the sad truth is that in this situation the owners simply cannot continue to pour in millions of loss pounds. Its hard economic facts in a Global market, if it was owned by Government maybe they would keep the place open, but very unlikely.
I hope that our Government can offer more support to the working people affected by the closure than was offered when the coal mines were closed!

don't disagree,

the problem is when it's a rigged market, with countries dumping into the markets until their competition goes under.

at the moment it's China, it was India last time.

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markcoznottz said:

Mr GrimNasty said:

FredClogs said:

People laughed at ed Milliband when he said he'd fix energy prices, probably laughing at corbyn's suggestion that we should take back some things into national ownership, but of course the last laugh will be the French, Spanish and Chinese state owned utility companies who set our energy prices.

It's got next to nothing to do with foreign ownership, the main cost pressures have been/are from green energy policies - which Labour is largely responsible for, especially Blair and Milliband.

Long term subsidation of manufacturing didn't end so well last time did it....

how is banging on green taxes and other costs on our domestic industry a subsidy?

China and India are simply laughing at our crass stupidity.

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crankedup said:

On a tiny scale perhaps but neatly embraces the problem of poor quality imports (such as Digga's example). I needed to have some valve springs made for my car last week, the business I used for the job is a one man and his wife business. He told me that he can no longer buy in the high quality wire he uses for compression springs from his suppliers! Instead its the crap from abroad. Fortunately he was able to source a supplier of the quality he required and purchased a very large job lot to keep this side of his business up to quality production. He was referring to Chrome silicon vanadium apparently, or something like that!

This is becoming all to common.

Special steels are becoming a massive problem.

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and to put it bluntly, All the LibLabCons support the climate change bullst.

until we pull out of the EU and dump the climate change act and all it;s associated bks, we are going to be looking at electricity prices double what they are now in the next 5-6 years.

We simply cannot keep paying wind operator's 3-4 times the price we are currently selling it for.

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shirt said:

redcar produces its own power using the byproduct gas from the steelmaking process as fuel.

nothing like as much as the plant needs though.

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Yes but it's only 1700 northerners and the EU says we can't help them, etc etc.......

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Digga said:

Murph7355 said:

Resolving the costs of doing business in this country has to be at the heart of any government intervention. And it must apply equally to all industry sectors.

Artificially propping up the price of a product is as bad as artificially keeping it low. The downstream organisations who depend on it then become equally uncompetitive - a government cannot prop up all prices in that way.

The energy price chart is interesting. A similar one on business taxes and regulations would be equally illuminating.

^All of this, 100%.

If governments start actively trying to pick winners and losers - as they did with further education in the 90s, pumping out more IT graduates than the market was ever going to recruit - it rarely ends well. Instead they need to look at overall redtape and global competitiveness.

I'm still waiting for Dave's bonfire of the quangos...

agreed,

Long term propping up is not what's required, the reality is although the current spot price is very low, this is literally a blip because of dumping, it's quite likely n the next 6-12 months to swing the other way, at which point there will be a shortage and the price will spike.

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speedy_thrills said:

If the Chinese want to dump cheap steel into the UK market at under cost I'm sure many UK based manufacturers won't be complaining, it's pretty much the equivalent of writing them a cheque. When the cost of primary materials is depressed (as happens in cyclical industry) it's everyone else that benefits.

that's the problem, they are not dumping into the UK market as such, it's the world market.

And yes, on paper it's cheaper steel, but in practice the steel industry needs has to be better quality so you end up paying more for it than the market spot price, (else you end up with shoddy parts like the picture before).

The car parts market is awash with cheap chinese sourced steel parts, very cheap but totally hopeless as the metallurgy of them is just random crap.

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How about shale gas?

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crankedup said:

I was against the principles of shale gas, or at least the uncertainty and unforeseen consequences of the methodology of extraction. Now feel more at ease and see it as the way forward for moderately priced energy.
Still would prefer clean coal technology to be developed and our coal mines opened using tech' for extraction methods. Maybe sometime in the future, hope.

nice idea, but there is no way we can ever re-open deep coal mines here again, quite apart from the H&S issues, nobody these days would want to work down one, which only leaves open-cast, which most people will simply not tolerate.

Shale gas is many times easier/cleaner/cheaper.

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saaby93 said:

Where does the Nissan car plant get its steel?

not Redcar directly, it;s not s strip-mill

Port Talbot is the only UK strip mill left IMHO, not sure of redcar provided steel to it though and even less sure that Nissan were a customer of Port Talbot.

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Tata mothballed Llanwern did they not?

Redcar did not make strip either (did they? thought it was just rolled steel beams etc?)

http://www.tatasteeleurope.com/en/news/news/focusi...

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Even more stupid when you can say that they want to build HS2 and where do you think the steel rails going to come from?

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To a point, your right, but we have been here before, and the price of steel rocketed as soon as we shut capacity down.

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Very much so..

This new ship order, where's the steel for that coming from?

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saaby93 said:

Isnt the UK manufacturing more cars than it's ever done?

in short, NO.

we are just about up to the levels we were 7 years ago, but miles away from the 70's figures (over 2 million PA).