Hugh Jarce
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 posted on 6/9/04 at 06:26 AM |
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Where has all the steel gone?
I tried to buy some 4130 tube today and was told supplies have virtually dried up. Mills in the US are on back order and steel prices generally have
risen sharply.
Someone mentioned the Chinese are buying every stick of steel they can get their hands on no matter what the grade.
Anyone on here heard anything on the wind? 
The pay isn't very good , but the work's hard.
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Hellfire
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| posted on 6/9/04 at 07:24 AM |
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Exactly that Hugh. The Chinese are indeed buying all the Iron and ferrous based material for manufacturing purposes. Corus (our biggest steel
manufacturer) is running at half capacity as a result. The price this year for scrap has risen; allegedly; by 100%.
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Rob Lane
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| posted on 6/9/04 at 08:20 AM |
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Yep, steel prices have risen dramatically because of this.
It's playing havoc with my business as I can't get a fixed price quote longer than a couple of days.
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binraker
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| posted on 6/9/04 at 03:33 PM |
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what are china needing all this ferous metal for. i know they are developing industry there and using tonnes and tonnes of it in the three gourges dam
thing(and loads of concrete).
what is it about me that makes me look like i know what im doing????
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sgraber
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| posted on 7/9/04 at 03:26 AM |
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China is an awakening giant. We are ALL in big trouble. And it's not only because of the 3 gorges dam. The dam is a future indicator of the
demand that a population of over 1 billion people will be making once they have electricity, start making money and wanting to buy goods and
services... The need for raw materials has driven countries to war before and it aint going to be pretty this time.
Graber
Steve Graber
http://www.grabercars.com/
"Quickness through lightness"
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JoelP
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| posted on 7/9/04 at 07:31 AM |
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especially war involving billion-head nuclear powers with a welly foreign frame of mind...
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mackie
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| posted on 7/9/04 at 07:52 AM |
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This must be hitting car manufacturers quite hard then. I guess they are absorbing the cost at the moment but that can't go on forever.
Then again I guess the cost of the steel is a fairly small part of the overall cost of producing a car I'm guessing.
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Rob Lane
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| posted on 7/9/04 at 08:41 AM |
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China has the fastest growing driving population in the world.
Where once there were bicycles, there are now more cars.
Business is booming in China, it's own economy is absorbing lots of the money generated but China is a big exporting nation.
How many products can you think of that are Chinese made, lathes, motor driven hand tools, bicycles, to name a few.
It is a BIG problem in the making.
Where once China needed only a small amount of oil compared to other countries, it is now one of the greediest in terms of oil demand and it's
rising !
This has been the cause of conflicts before but when it's the largest government disposable population in the world, it's worrying.
My son visited China last year as part of his final college studies.
He was amazed at the difference from city to countryside.
City biz districts buzzing with life and much wealth in evidence, if somewhat discreet.
Countryside, half mile out of city, still in middle ages in some cases. Cheap produce, cheap labour, cheap goods. He brought back a typical
'coolies' hat. It was hand woven in some kind of basket weave, cost ? 18p yes 18p.
They have the largest and cheapest workforce in the world, if they don't destroy the world for its oil, they will destroy it eventually
economically.
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marktigere1
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| posted on 7/9/04 at 09:23 AM |
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People want cheap goods.
China will keep growing.
I work for an electronics firm making everything in Britain (Cambridge, Norfolk etc) but it is getting more and more difficult to get anything made in
time. Thats why companies ship everything abroad to places like India and China because it can be made cheaper with bigger profit margins. I'm
lucky, I work for a boss that does not have profit at the top of his agenda. Of course profit is important, but consumerism (word?) has gone mad!!
DVD players for £39 I personally think thats ridiculous but there you go, I'm a sado.
Cheers
Mark
If a bolt is stuck force it.
If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway!!!
(My Dad 1991)
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Peteff
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| posted on 7/9/04 at 09:27 AM |
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Don't be such doom mongerers.
How much do these Chinese goods cost? They are an exporting nation, you will be able to buy the stuff back off them at less than you were getting it
from Corus and with all the money going into the development of new processes and machinery it'll probably be better as well. It can't be
that progressive over there or they wouldn't be risking their lives cockle picking in Morecambe Bay. Steve you sound like you are convinced
there is going to be a war over this. If they use their WOMD the materials they need will be unusable for the next 2000 years so cheer up and just
wait for the stuff to come back round. As for the largest disposable population in the world, once they have tasted the capitalist way of life they
will not be so easily influenced by their leaders
yours, Pete
I went into the RSPCA office the other day. It was so small you could hardly swing a cat in there.
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andkilde
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| posted on 7/9/04 at 06:47 PM |
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Yeah, The Chinese economy will "normalize" eventually and the cost of their goods will rise to reflect the total cost of production,
shipment, etc.
Right now they're still a massive commune which needs to keep the billions in busywork in order to prevent them from rising up and lopping their
leaders heads off.
As it stands now, you can buy high quality machine tools, landed in the US, for less than the price of the raw materials (According to my current boss
who, until recently, was a VP at a major US machine tool builder).
It's scary during this transitional period but it will even out in the next twenty years or so.
The scary part is energy sources and usage -- anyone who thinks Iraq is about terrorism is sadly mistaken...
Heard a neat factoid on NPR (US public radio) the other day. Apparently if North America increases its average automotive fuel mileage by 7 mpg we
could stop importing foreign oil. Even taken with a bit of healthy skepticism it doesn't sound too dire.
Cheers, Ted
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binraker
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| posted on 7/9/04 at 07:20 PM |
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In the UK we need 160GW of generation to keep the place lit up. Torness and hunterston B (the two newest, AGC power plants) generates about 3GW
together at full pelt. The three gorges damn will generate 18.6GW of power (1/9th of Chinas demand) at full throttle. A wind turbine will generate
about 500kW of power on a good day and the average size of a widfarm is about 25 units. There are some with many more and some with a solitary mill.
But it will only do this on the 20 to 80 percentile days. In very high and low wind they shut down. So on those hot sunny still days when everyone has
fans and aircon on they sit static as they do on the windiest darkest coldest nights when we have our electric fires and kettles and cookers on.
pumped storage, where water is pumped up a hill to a reservoir when there is excess generation to demand and then lets it back down to produce power
in high demand times is one solution to level out wind power but is about 50% efficient (a mechanical engineer may be chuffed but the sparks aren’t)
the the “I don’t want my back garden under 200’ of water” argument. all the generation I the UK has about 50 to 70 years till it all has to be
replaced and in that time we are all going to get electric cars (ill believe it when we see it). If you use fule cells then you need to electrolyse
sea water, which requires more power than you'll get out after the hydrogen is spent in the cell, or you use batteries, which still need to be
powered off the mains and if you recharge them away from the power station, i.e. at home, then you loose a further 4% throught transmition line
losses. Now having sorted all those problems, how long dose the average house run the average car on an average day and whats the average generation
to drive power output efficiency? 50kW car for 2 hours for 10 000 000 people at an efficiency of say 10% for batteries and 15% for fule cells (figures
are a bit old. If you have nice shiney new ones fell free to do the calculations) 360,000,000,000,000,000 J (erm 10^15 that’s Peta, right?) 360PJ call
it 400PJ for expansion and devide by the number of second in te day to give a magic number of 4,600,000,000,000 or 4.6TW, owch
what is it about me that makes me look like i know what im doing????
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mangogrooveworkshop
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| posted on 7/9/04 at 08:31 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by binraker
In the UK we need 160GW of generation to keep the place lit up. Torness and hunterston B (the two newest, AGC power plants) generates about 3GW
together at full pelt. The three gorges damn will generate 18.6GW of power (1/9th of Chinas demand) at full throttle. A wind turbine will generate
about 500kW of power on a good day and the average size of a widfarm is about 25 units. There are some with many more and some with a solitary mill.
But it will only do this on the 20 to 80 percentile days. In very high and low wind they shut down. So on those hot sunny still days when everyone has
fans and aircon on they sit static as they do on the windiest darkest coldest nights when we have our electric fires and kettles and cookers on.
pumped storage, where water is pumped up a hill to a reservoir when there is excess generation to demand and then lets it back down to produce power
in high demand times is one solution to level out wind power but is about 50% efficient (a mechanical engineer may be chuffed but the sparks aren’t)
the the “I don’t want my back garden under 200’ of water” argument. all the generation I the UK has about 50 to 70 years till it all has to be
replaced and in that time we are all going to get electric cars (ill believe it when we see it). If you use fule cells then you need to electrolyse
sea water, which requires more power than you'll get out after the hydrogen is spent in the cell, or you use batteries, which still need to be
powered off the mains and if you recharge them away from the power station, i.e. at home, then you loose a further 4% throught transmition line
losses. Now having sorted all those problems, how long dose the average house run the average car on an average day and whats the average generation
to drive power output efficiency? 50kW car for 2 hours for 10 000 000 people at an efficiency of say 10% for batteries and 15% for fule cells (figures
are a bit old. If you have nice shiney new ones fell free to do the calculations) 360,000,000,000,000,000 J (erm 10^15 that’s Peta, right?) 360PJ call
it 400PJ for expansion and devide by the number of second in te day to give a magic number of 4,600,000,000,000 or 4.6TW, owch
Do we have homer simpson online.....hows marg and the kids.......lol
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