The Steel Industry

For those of us who are retired, we can only imagine the stresses being felt by the ones who are not. Dave Bagshaw has kept us up to date on the steel service centre wasteland, but yesterday's announcement by U.S. Steel that it was shutting down Canada, except for the Coke Ovens was a real jolt for all of the players! I understand that ArcelorMittal is currently meeting forecasts, albeit at just 60% of full capacity and we can only believe that our friends will be spared Stelco's fate. Having taken the extreme step of shutting the Canadian mills down, I have to believe that U.S.S. won't open them up again until their remaining mills are going full out - a prospect which is not in the foreseeable future. A year or more seems to be the most likely time frame. If anyone doubted the full impact of the world's current economic meltdown this should be an awakening!