EU Wanted to Help British Steel Industry...

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Flared Hicks said:
So what's all the noise on here about Chinese steel not being up to scratch then? Genuine question as it's not an area in which I have any specific knowledge.
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Steel will have higher grades, strength and qualities, when anything is designed the quality of steel or any other materials to be used will have a specification, tensile strength, expansion and contraction etc etc under certain conditions....what the material can expect to find in it's lifespan. Eg the steel used on a tank is going to be a lot stronger than the stuff used for a car.
What a lot seem to think is that because Chinese steel is cheap it therefore equates to being shite.
But if any steel is ordered even the Chinese company's will have to make sure that the steel supplied for the job is upto scratch and it will be tested this side by the Importers and stamped to say it's upto standard, and what grade it is, like any thing else shipped into the EU, it has to pass muster
 


Boz33 said:
Nope that's wrong, how wouldn't a massive levy put prices up? If they have to put the levies up so far that British steel becomes the cheapest option in this country, by definition the cost of steel is going to go up for everyone, because your having to pay British prices, not Chinese prices as they are now?
That in turn would raise the cost of everything that uses steel what happens to manufacturers of cars? Do they say fair does, we raise the price of a car for the consumer because they won't mind or do they think, well this is gonna cost a fortune, let's move the car plant to somewhere that either hasn't got a steel tariff as draconian as the uk, or we will save the costs and move to Eastern Europe in the eu for example and we can still ship to the uk, and the levy becomes mute, but the car industry leaves, shocking for the likes of the Nissan lads, but will save a couple of thousands steel jobs.
It would also hit exports as well, anything we make from steel would be more expensive, therefore harder to export and sell at the higher price
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Steel is half the price it was. Even doubling the price would take us back to about 2011 prices.

Nissan is making more profit.
 
ravydavygravy said:
Steel is half the price it was. Even doubling the price would take us back to about 2011 prices.

Nissan is making more profit.
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And do you think all the manufacturers would think, yeh great, we'll pay a lot more for steel in this country, or do you not think they'll look abroad and think well the raw materials are a lot cheaper, and we all know the labour is too, maybe it's a good time to shift operations.
There's a world glut of steel, no one is building, especially the Chinese who were gobbling it up. Where do we sell the steel that everyone's proposing to make?

Same goes for oil, maybe we should whack a huge tariff on that too, so the British stuff looks a better deal

If we stick a huge tariff on coal we can open the mines again?
 
Boz33 said:
Even the most advanced industries can use the not so bright. If not, when the high tech industries are firing, there are loads of auxiliary jobs that go hand in hand with it.
We may be pretty shit ATM, but this country has been at the forefront of inventing and technology always.

We have super inventive people, always have done, from inventing things like the spinning jenny, to the tv, to the Internet, to the telephone, the list is endless and unsurpassed by any country ever.

What we need is a government that would back these types of people and invest in helping them start, rather than foreign companies taking our best and brightest and developing things that should be nurtured here
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The trouble is, this country might well have been responsible for multiple inventions and been at the forefront of technological advancement in many industries - however, in the main they were from industries that created by necessity, a multi skilled workforce in their thousands to build these creations. Today - what would be the UK's equivalent to those industries that are now no more?

Or put another way, what modern, hi tech industry could create the thousands of skilled jobs in the UK on a par with the 'older' heavy industries?

Nothing creates skilled jobs by volume more so than heavy industry - and modern ships/trains/aircraft/cars/steel etc are hardly 'old' and from yesteryear...
 
Boz33 said:
And do you think all the manufacturers would think, yeh great, we'll pay a lot more for steel in this country, or do you not think they'll look abroad and think well the raw materials are a lot cheaper, and we all know the labour is too, maybe it's a good time to shift operations.
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There's nee way Nissan would move to save a few quid (in the grand scheme of things). It would cost gizillions.
 
There would be plenty of manufacturers that would shift if huge levies were put onto steel, and how do you know places like Nissan wouldn't move? They use a huge amount of steel and if long term they see steel as too expensive in this country they would have to consider it.

You say it would cost Nissan gazillions to shift, well if they even put feelers out to see which countries would want them, do you not think the governments of those countries would pay a fair chunk of cash to capture them....we did after all with all the incentives they got to move up north initially.

What about the all the other goods made of steel? When the prices of those go up, do you think people will think oh that's ok I don't mind paying more?
What about exports, anything steel would go up in price, do you think exporting would still be as profitable, or if foreign companies would think yeh that's fine we will pay an increase so the uk can tariff foreign steel so they can keep unviable businesses going
 
Boz33 said:
Steel will have higher grades, strength and qualities, when anything is designed the quality of steel or any other materials to be used will have a specification, tensile strength, expansion and contraction etc etc under certain conditions....what the material can expect to find in it's lifespan. Eg the steel used on a tank is going to be a lot stronger than the stuff used for a car.
What a lot seem to think is that because Chinese steel is cheap it therefore equates to being shite.
But if any steel is ordered even the Chinese company's will have to make sure that the steel supplied for the job is upto scratch and it will be tested this side by the Importers and stamped to say it's upto standard, and what grade it is, like any thing else shipped into the EU, it has to pass muster
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Quick example, oil rigs that were built in Britain using British steel in the 80s, up to the current oil downturn, were in the main still operating.
Rigs being built in China using cheap Chinese steel will be lucky to last 10 years.
 
consettsafc said:
Quick example, oil rigs that were built in Britain using British steel in the 80s, up to the current oil downturn, were in the main still operating.
Rigs being built in China using cheap Chinese steel will be lucky to last 10 years.
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It fits with the oil companies model for rigs, what can be done? Maybe they work on a model of the rigs have a shorter time span, so the steel may not have to last as long? They've obviously been made to a safe enough standard. And what is the life cycle for a Chinese built platform? Are they made to last 30 or 40 years or are they produced to make the maximum profit over their lifecyle and then be replaced?


If a market isn't there for British steel at the price we produce it....and there wasn't, again what do we do with the damn stuff, stack it up and think well that's shown those Chinese, we make better steel. All the while the Chinese are flogging their steel
 
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