Final Thoughts

I have been in New York City since Sunday. I am participating in a panel on Wednesday at the Cowen & Company conference. Steel people don’t get to attend most of the financial related conferences. The attendees tend to be hedge fund managers and investors. Their perspectives of the steel industry can be quite different than what I see on a daily basis while speaking to active buyers and sellers of steel. So, it has been interesting to listen to a few of the presentations from steel people to the investment community.

Perhaps the most telling was the presentation by Lourenco Goncalves, former CEO of Metals USA who is the new CEO of Cliffs Natural Resources. He spent quite a bit of time educating the group in his own special style as he explained the difference between fines, lump and pellets (iron ore) as well as metallurgical coal. As he went through the process I learned something as well. Something that those within the industry should be aware of if you are not already. The Australian iron ore companies send fines to China. Iron ore fines have to be further processed before they can be fed into a steel mill. The process is called sinter and the plant produces pollution. So, Goncalves pointed out that the Australians are exporting pollution to China… An interesting perspective.