Steel Products
Steel 101 Conference a Success with Help from SSAB
Written by John Packard
January 28, 2018
On Wednesday and Thursday of this past week a sold-out group of attendees and six Steel Market Update instructors, one event coordinator and a potential future instructor traveled to Mobile, Alabama to participate in the first Steel 101 workshop of 2018. The workshop was a success aided by the generosity of the SSAB plate mill which we toured on Wednesday afternoon.
Each workshop begins with instruction about the steelmaking and rolling process. We introduced a new instructor Chuck McDaniels, a former metallurgist with Sparrows Point, who discussed how an integrated steel mill makes steel from iron ore. Complementing Chuck was Steve Murphy, another process expert only from the mini-mill side of the industry. Combined they described in detail blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace and electric arc furnace operations as well as ladle metallurgy and vacuum degassing stations and how they impact the ultimate final product being rolled.
Steve Painter, with his 50 years of experience in the industry, provided a look at the downstream rolling mills after which we boarded a bus to travel to the SSAB electric arc furnace steel plate mill located about 30 minutes from our hotel.
When we arrived at the mill the SSAB general manager told us that their caster was down due to a bad bearing and one of the shroud segments was being replaced. In a normal situation this would mean our attendees would not be able to view the EAF’s being charged with scrap. However, SSAB made special arrangements for our group to see the two EAF’s working even though the steel produced would have to be held for a couple of hours until the caster came back online.
Later that evening our group celebrated the day with dinner and cocktails at a local restaurant. This gave everyone time to network with one another and to get to know our instructors a little better.
“I would highly recommend this class for anyone in the steel industry. I learned a variety of different information that will be helpful to me in the future. The mill tour really helped reinforce everything we learned day 1 in class. Each instructor is well versed in the area they present & it makes the class very interesting.” Renee Asher, Kloeckner Metals
Day two of the workshop began with Chuck and John Eckstein describing how different qualities of steel are made and how the price of iron ore, scrap and other inputs for both an EAF and blast furnace/BOF theoretically affect the cost to produce hot rolled and other flat rolled products. They showed how a tensile tester works and what tensile, yield strength and elongation mean.
The class discussed typical end applications for the various steels and then how steel, both long and flat, are bought and sold.
Purchasing expert Mario Briccetti went through real-life examples of how to use a price book to calculate the buying price (before any discounts) for flat rolled products.
As we neared the end of day two we looked at the market and some of the factors that affect steel prices in the United States (such as currency values).
SMU publisher, John Packard, walked through the various antidumping and countervailing duty suits, circumvention, Section 337 and the one item that could be a potential “gray swan” event – Section 232.
Then he discussed many of the websites, periodicals and other items that can be used to gather market intelligence. Many of which are free. As part of the workshop each of our attendees receives three months access to our Premium newsletter and full access to our website.
“Overall, two-day workshop was put together very well by all instructors. Informative two days starting with an overview of the steelmaking process via class presentation followed by actual onsite visit and then ending the workshop with a review of current events and information driving the cost of steel. Mike Heenan, Olympic Steel
Our next workshop will be held just outside of Chicago in Merrillville, Indiana on March 28-29, 2018. As part of this workshop we will tour for the third time NLMK USA Portage facility. Details and registration can be found on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/events/steel101 or you can contact our office for more information: 800-432-3475.
Photo is of metallurgists John Eckstein and Chuck McDaniels along with one of last week’s attendees.
John Packard
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