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Ukraine has temporarily lost up to 40% of its overall steelmaking capacity following Russia’s fierce shelling of Mariupol in the last three weeks in an attempt to seize the port city, Yuriy Ryzhenkov, the general director of Metinvest, said in an interview with Ukrayina-24 television aired late March 29.
Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, is home to Metinvest’s Azovstal and Ilyich steel works.
Ilyich is Ukraine’s second-largest steelmaker followed by Azovstal.
“Mariupol plants represent more than a third of Ukraine’s overall steel output,” Ryzhenkov said. “In other words, Ukraine has lost between 30%-40% of its steelmaking capacity.”
Metinvest indicated that it would rebuild the steelmaking facilities, but only if Mariupol survived the assault and remained in the hands of Ukraine.
The company is seeking to restart its Zaporizhstal steel works, which has shut operations due to disrupted logistics, as all Black Sea ports remain blocked.
Metinvest also accounts for about 60% of Ukraine’s overall iron ore output, which remains unaffected, and has increased its iron ore exports via rail to Europe almost twofold and plans to supply at least 1 million mt of iron ore to Europe in March.
The group controls three major Ukrainian iron ore producers in the Kryviy Rih region — Pivnichniy HZK, Tsentralniy HZK and Inhuletskiy HZK — and these remain operational, as does its Dneprovsky iron and steel works.
However, Metinvest is finding alternative slab suppliers for its mills in Italy and the UK, after supplies from Mariupol were halted.
“The most difficult situation will be at our Italian and British plants, as they were completely dependent on slabs supplied from Azovstal,” Ryzhenkov said.
The company plans to arrange supplies of slabs at its European plants from China and Brazil, but it will take up to two months to readjust the supplies, according to Ryzhenkov.
“This is a serious shock for European steel industry, which was integrated with the Ukrainian one,” he said.
Metinvest is in talks with the state-owned railway company UkrZaliznytsia to supply raw materials and to ship steel products for exports.
The company increased output of steel by 15% on the year to 9.53 million mt in 2021, while output of iron ore concentrate and pellets rose 3% on the year to 31.34 million mt, it said in a Feb. 1 statement.
Metinvest is not the only steelmaker impacted by the conflict, with ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih previously having halted underground operations on Feb. 24 and idled steelmaking on March 3.
No impact to Ferrexpo operations
However, other miners in central and western Ukraine are continuing to work normally.
Iron ore pellet producer Ferrexpo has not had any impact to its operations, which are located near Kremenchuk in central Ukraine, although has experienced some logistical disruptions.
“Initially … our operations continued, but we saw a lot of supply lines and even the services that were being provided either stop momentarily for some days as people assessed what was going on, but we haven’t really seen anything significant in terms of supply of our regular materials that we use,” a Ferrexpo spokesperson told S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Although some of Ferrexpo’s materials have come through the Black Sea, most of its suppliers had found alternative routes or the company was actively sourcing alternatives for certain items, the spokesperson said, such as using rail or road from other unaffected ports.
“We haven’t really seen any disruptions as such – we’ve seen some delays initially, but most of those have been rectified now and we have no real concerns at the moment around the supply of anything that we need for our operations and that’s in terms of gas, power and diesel down to consumables that we’re using in the process,” the spokesperson added.
The company has also had some issues getting products out.
“Approximately half of our materials went out via the Black Sea and we were regularly railing across the border every day and that’s continued, so we’ve been able to get our material across into western Europe and deliver to our customers and some additional material has gone that way as well,” the spokesperson said.
Keeping industry operating and revenues and salaries as normal was also important for the defense of Ukraine, the Ferrexpo spokesperson said.
“We keep the business operating … we keep paying our taxes, we pay those suppliers that are continuing to support Ferrexpo and we support through the humanitarian effort,” he added.
Miner Avellana Gold’s operations had also continued normally as they were situated at Beregovo in far west Ukraine, a spokesperson told S&P Global.
“Our biggest problem is restrictions on imports – only critical is allowed and that halted some of our projects in that we were caught in the middle of modernization and underground mining preparation,” they said.
Meanwhile, Volt Resources’ Zavalievsky Graphite division suspended its graphite mining and processing operations at Zavallya on Feb. 24 as a caution and also relocated management, accounting and marketing personnel from Kyiv to Lviv.
The company did not respond to S&P Global’s request for a comment.
Storey courtesy of Jacqueline Holman, Alexander Bor – Eurometal
Why does steel hold such an important attachment in the public eye in a way that other industries and sectors don’t?
Why does it matter so much for the rest of the economy, and what does the future hold?
In plain numbers it employs around 33,000 people directly and a further 42,000 people in the supply chain.
These jobs are highly skilled, with the average salary almost a third above the average national salary overall.
In the ‘Red Wall’ areas of Wales and Yorkshire & Humber the salaries are almost half above the regional average.
These may seem small compared to the many hundreds of thousands employed in sectors such as aerospace and automotive.
But the bare numbers mask a far greater importance.
As a vital foundation industry steel is fundamental to a strong UK manufacturing base and the success of a wide variety of other key, strategic industrial sectors.
It boosts innovation across high-value supply chains, serves as a test bed for the UK’s world-class universities and feeds a pipeline of highly skilled talent that benefits the economy.
Critically, it serves as a hub for industrial clustering and will be essential in ensuring the UK meets its ambitious climate targets.
A strong domestic steel sector helps to maximise the economic value to the UK from every pound spent on major infrastructure projects.
It contributes £2.1billion directly to national output, indirectly another £2.7billion, and £1.7billion to the balance of trade.
Steel will be critical to delivering the Government’s commitment to levelling up, especially through investment in new and upgraded infrastructure projects.
Ministers must look at the bigger picture. Such a vision recognises that steel demand continues to grow, representing an additional £4billion a year opportunity for domestic supply alone by 2030.
In other major developed economies such as Japan and Germany, the sector continues to be strong. Just as it is there, steel production can be part of a highly developed, balanced economy in the UK.
First, the Government can address barriers to investment and make the UK the best place for international steel companies to place their capital investment.
This means removing the eye-wateringly high electricity prices faced by producers compared with their French and German counterparts.
It means embracing UK-made steel wherever possible for domestic infrastructure projects, and driving reform of procurement down the supply chain.
This wouldn’t just benefit steel makers, but the whole economy. Government can also act to counter import surges by extending the UK’s steel safeguards, which are due to lapse in June this year.
These were introduced by the EU in 2018 to prevent being swamped by massive influxes of imported steel. Keeping these safeguards protects jobs and protects the environment as they guard against an over-reliance on imports.
A nation that has a strong industrial base and can regulate its carbon output is a nation that can contribute far more to the fight to protect our planet than one that simply imports steel.
An agenda for a green Britain is an agenda for UK Steel.
The U.S. and U.K. reached a deal to ease tariffs on British steel and aluminium, resolving a longstanding irritant as the nations work to strengthen trade and integration.
The deal will allow 500,000 metric tons of steel annually to be imported duty free, with higher amounts subject to tariffs, starting June 1, the Commerce Department said in a statement. The U.K. also will end retaliatory tariffs on more than $500 million worth of U.S. exports, including distilled spirits, agriculture products and consumer goods.
The deal will require that steel qualifying for duty-free treatment be melted and poured in the U.K., although some processing in the European Union is allowed. It also mandates that any British steel company owned by a Chinese entity must undergo an audit of financial records to assess influence from China’s government and share the results with the U.S.
The deal came after a meeting between U.K. International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Tuesday in Washington. Raimondo said that the deal will help to counter unfair trade practises by countries like China and will ease inflationary pressures.
“By allowing for a flow of duty-free steel and aluminium from the U.K., we further ease the gap between supply and demand for these products in the U.S.,” Raimondo said.
The Trump administration imposed a 25% steel tariff, along with a 10% duty on aluminium imports, in March 2018 on a range of nations, using a national-security provision in a 1962 trade law. The European Union and the U.S. in October brokered a deal for Washington to ease those tariffs, but the tariffs remained on the U.K. due to the nation’s exit from the bloc.
The U.S. also reached a similar accord with Japan in February.
Trevelyan had been in Baltimore this week meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai
Tai said in a statement that the nations also have agreed to keep engaging on the threat posed by carbon intensive non-market excess capacity in the steel and aluminium industries — an area where China is seen as the biggest culprit.
Steel imports from the U.K. totalled 246,893 tons, or slightly less than 1% of all steel imported by the U.S., during 2021. This compares to an average of 635,830 tons that came from the country annually in the five years before the Trump administration implemented Section 232 tariffs.
What is Industry 4.0?
With Industry 4.0, the future of business is happening today. You’ve probably seen aspects of it; consumer electronics that allow homeowners to control their thermostats and lights from their mobile phones for example.
This is what’s referred to as the Internet of Things, or the IoT. The same type of device connectivity and cloud storage capabilities are now coming to the Metals Distribution Industry as well.
Historians now refer to the most recent industrial revolution as Industry 4.0. Put simply, each revolution changes how people create.
Industry 1.0 – You’ve probably heard of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, when manufacturing first became more common than farming. Mechanisation, steam engines, water power, Iron production, textiles, mining and machine tools.
Industry 2.0 – The second revolution occurred when factories transitioned from mechanical to electric operations, mass production, engines, telegraph, gas and water supply.
Industry 3.0 – The third happened when factories integrated computers, PCL, robotics, electronic networks, automation and digital machines.
Industry 4.0 – The latest revolution marks the use of the internet to facilitate manufacturing processes across the industry. Smart facilities use autonomous machines, advanced robotics, big data, analytics, internet of things( IoT), digital cloud, machine learning and AI to improve efficiency and respond to problems as soon as they arise.
Adopting Industry 4.0
Adopting the technology of Industry 4.0 requires a significant investment but allows for numerous benefits. For instance, productivity increases dramatically with the integration of advanced technology. In fact, in the United States alone, technology has increased manufacturing productivity by 40% in the last two decades.
Industry 4.0 also allows for better tracking of materials and more efficient inventory. If materials used in manufacturing have defects, tracking technology can provide a simpler way to determine which products are affected.
Are you ready for Industry 4.0?
Though the manufacturing sphere is swiftly changing, many facilities don’t feel prepared for the new industrial revolution. While 84% of companies are moving quickly to Industry 4.0, only 14% feel ready for the revolution — and only 25% feel they have a well-trained workforce that could tackle the demands of this move.
Of course, most companies want to move forward with adopting these new advanced technologies and methods. Several factors continue to push the industry into a more savvy future; data availability, enhanced connectivity, smart factories, and consumer demand are all driving the industry into the next revolution.
Data availability makes it easier to know every step in production, make changes where needed to be made to enhance productivity and collect data to become as efficient as possible. And increasing consumer desires push companies to make these changes.
Implementing Industry 4.0
To implement Industry 4.0, you’ll need to upgrade your equipment and employee training programmess. Begin by adding new software systems to handle the automation. You’ll also need to partner with an established industry IT company to ensure that your platform is installed and operating correctly and keep your system safe from hackers.
Industry 4.0 is a vision and policy with standardisation while accepting flexibility in a world that is in motion.
The goal is to enable rapid decision-making, monitor assets and processes in real-time, and leverage existing data and additional data sources from connected assets to gain efficiencies to create end-to-end information streams in real-time across the value chain.
Enabling more efficient production and servicing, as well as superior customer interaction (including gaining real-time data from actual product usage) and cutting the inefficiencies, irrelevance and costs where possible. Promoting a customer-centric sense of service to customers who value speed, cost efficiencies and value-added innovative services.
In the end, it remains business – to grow, innovate and remain relevant while optimising customer value and loyalty.
Image courtesy of Umberto via Unsplash
The federal agencies are urging organisations to immediately apply recommended mitigations to secure their machines
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and FBI have issued a joint security alert, urging organisations to immediately take steps to prevent Russian state-backed hackers from exploiting vulnerabilities in multifactor authentication (MFA) protocols and the Windows print spooler.
As per the advisory, Russian actors recently exploited MFA defaults and the critical ‘PrintNightmare‘ bug to compromise an unnamed NGO’s network and steal sensitive information.
They gained access to the NGO’s cloud and email accounts, moved laterally via the organisation’s network, and exfiltrated documents.
The hacking attempts started as early as May 2021, the advisory says, although it does not disclose details of where the NGO was located or the length of time the attack lasted.
Russian actors apparently gained initial access to the network via compromised credentials, then enrolled a new device in the organisation’s Duo MFA.
Using a brute-force password guessing attack, the hackers obtained the victim’s credentials, granting them access to an account with a simple and predictable password.
The victim’s account had been un-enrolled from Duo owing to a prolonged period of inactivity, but was not disabled in Active Directory.
The actors were able to add a new device to the account, satisfy the authentication requirements, and get access to the victim network – all allowed under Duo’s default configuration settings, even for inactive accounts.
The hackers then exploited the PrintNightmare vulnerability (CVE-2021-34527) to gain administrator privileges and turn off MFA.
PrintNightmare is a vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service, which provides printing functionality inside local networks. The vulnerability was disclosed in June last year and enabled attackers to take control of vulnerable systems remotely to run arbitrary code (install programmes, modify data, and create new accounts) through local privilege escalation.
After turning off MFA, the hackers authenticated to the NGO’s VPN as non-administrator users and connected to Windows domain controllers via Remote Desktop Protocol. Finally, they obtained credentials for other domain accounts, which they used to move laterally to the victim’s cloud storage and email accounts and access confidential content.
CISA and the FBI recommend that enterprises enable, enforce, and correctly set up MFA, as well as prioritise patching known exploited bugs to prevent such attacks.
The mitigations measures recommended by CISA include:
- Enforcing MFA for all users, without exception, and ensuring that it is set appropriately to prevent ‘fail open’ and re-enrollment scenarios
- Apply time-out and lock-out features
- Disable inactive accounts in MFA, active directory, etc.
- Update software with a focus on known exploitable flaws
- Regularly monitor network logs for unusual activity
- Apply security alerting policies
“Over the last several years, Russian state-sponsored cyber actors have been persistent in targeting U.S. cleared defence contractors to get at sensitive information,” said Rob Joyce, director of NSA Cybersecurity.
“Armed with insights like these, we can better detect and defend important assets together.”
FBI cyber division assistant director Bryan Vorndran said, “We encourage organisations who may have experienced this type of exploitation to report to the FBI and/or CISA and provide us with additional information so we can continue to deter and disrupt nation-state actors.”
“The FBI will not tolerate this type of criminal activity and we will use all of the tools in our toolbelt to combat this threat.”
Image courtesy of cottonbro via Pexels
Carbon emissions have been a widely recognised issue for more than a century. As emissions continue to rise year after year, it’s increasingly common for organisations to acknowledge the issues associated with carbon emissions and give loose plans for reducing them in the future.
The future is now.
Carbon emissions are damaging to the planet and actions need to be taken immediately in order to minimise the damage.
At this year’s Zukunft Stahl conference in mid-February, Henrik Adam of Tata Steel Europe shared a similar message.
“Europe’s steel production will more and more depend on the decarbonisation process at mills… We feel a strong sense of responsibility to decarbonise our operations and we need to do this right now and not in ten years’ time. The future is being shaped today.” – Henrik Adam
To back up their statements, Tata Steel shared their goals for tackling carbon emissions: a 30-40% reduction in emissions in Europe by 2030, and the production of CO2-neutral steel by 2050.
Advances in technology over the coming years will make the decarbonisation of steel easier and more cost effective, but the luxury of time is dwindling.
“The future is being shaped today”
The urgency in Henrik Adam’s statement is not to be brushed aside. Furthermore, the responsibility of decarbonising the steel industry cannot lie on the shoulders of Tata Steel, or even on the shoulders of the European steel industry. Reducing carbon emissions in the steel industry must become a worldwide effort.
In a thick smog of CO2, Tata Steel’s efforts are a shining beacon of purity.
To read more, click here.
Storey and Conference Transcript courtesy of:
It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Stephen Powderley on 5th March 2022, whilst in a hospice in Walsall, receiving care for Cancer.
Stephen was diagnosed in early January 2022 with his illness and it progressed quickly. During this time he was admitted to hospital and we were kept updated by his friends who visited regularly during this difficult time.
His care, kindness and humour will be sadly missed by his work colleagues and customers. He built great relationships with everyone he met.
Sincere heartfelt sympathies are sent to his family and friends.
Nearly 110 years have passed since the tragic sinking of the Titanic. Over the years, research has helped to determine the various factors that sank the unsinkable. The iceberg warnings were dismissed, the ship was travelling too fast in poor conditions, the binoculars were inaccessible to the crew – the list of things that went wrong is frighteningly long.
It wasn’t until the 1990’s that researchers were able to test steel from the Titanic’s hull to find that it contained a high percentage of sulphur, making the steel very brittle. In the early 20th century, material testing was basic at best and there was no accurate way to test the chemical composition of the steel.
A century later, metallurgy has come a long way. Materials are tested for their chemical compositions and mechanical properties to ensure that they meet the certifications required by the various international standards organisations such as ASTM, ASME and EN.
In today’s world, Metal specific ERP programmes like the iMetal Platform are able to provide a robust cast analysis programme that helps its users consistently report their MTRs with accuracy. Our cast analysis module delivers a systematic and easy approach to keep track of material traceability, characterisation, identification and validation.
iMetal Cast Analysis Module provides chemical analysis and verification of metal specification that can identify and quantify the elemental composition of your material and help support your quality control processes.
Material identification, characterisation and verification are essential, iMetal provides not only reporting but field level validation of chemical elements and physical properties to ensure your materials conform to industry standards.
Finding the right partner to provide accurate chemical and physical properties of your material is important. The iMetal Software is metal specific and can support cast analysis on a range of metals and a variety of material attributes and specifications that will identify and quantify the elemental composition of a metal alloy.
Case in Point:
Failure to meet material certification standards is not only dangerous, it brings serious consequences as well.
Elaine Thomas, a metallurgist working in a Washington State foundry, landed herself in the hot-seat back in 2017 after it came to light that she had been falsifying material test reports and providing unsatisfactory steel to US Navy contractors since 1985.
For 32 years, Thomas circumvented the Navy’s material requirements, supplying fake MTRs for nearly half of the steel that the foundry had provided to the Navy for submarine parts.
Thomas ultimately took responsibility and pleaded guilty for fake test reports on about 240 steel productions. Her prosecution resulted in a prison sentence and a hefty fine.
Since the situation initially came to light, the Navy has made it increasingly clear that accurate material testing is an absolute necessity for their suppliers. Fortunately for everyone involved, there have been no reported incidents with the substandard material and corrective measures have been implemented.
Jonas Metals Software and the iMetal Platform will exceed the ERP needs of your Metal Service Centre. In addition, our team can advise on the best practises in the use of advanced metal applications in all sectors of the metals industry. You can have the peace of mind that iMetal will provide Total Quality Assurance and reliable chemical analysis reporting and verification to meet the most stringent quality control requirements.
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Image courtesy of Bence Szemerey – Pexels
