ArcelorMittal continues price rally

ArcelorMittal has raised hot-rolled coil prices by Eur50/mt to Eur650/mt EXW Ruhr on the spot market with immediate effect, sources told S&P Global Platts December 4th.

The move is the latest in a number of price hikes since late summer, increasing steel coil prices by almost Eur200/mt in a period of less than six months.

Prices for the Italian market have been raised to the same level on a delivered basis, Platts understands, and are set for April delivery. The Dec. 3 index for HRC EXW Ruhr stood at Eur570.50/mt. Sources said Dec. 4 that spot market levels were around Eur600/mt EXW Ruhr as lower priced possibilities have dried up.

Prices for hot-dip galvanized sheet have been raised to Eur750/mt EXW Ruhr for DX51D grade.

The European coils market is experiencing temporary supply issues ranging from a lack of slabs at European mills to coil shortages from mills to customers while stockholders struggle to secure any material to build up stock.

Demand has outpaced supply as European mills struggled to ramp up fast enough following shutdowns earlier this year. Although there will be more capacity coming online in Q1 next year as mills are further ramping up, market participants expect the supply shortage to last at least into Q2 next year.

The shortage is currently supported by a lack of import material but an Italian re-roller was heard to have booked HRC at USD720/mt FOB Egypt to secure volumes.

Most mills are currently out of the spot market, having filled Q1 order books and are now starting to offer into Q2.

“What I can see is that price is reflecting material – there is no material around,” said a trader.Another trader said that mills are on and off the market, changing prices daily while securing any bigger sixed volume is a struggle.

“Daily announcements like that are fueling the sentiment and overheating, it’s not healthy,” said a German stockholder, adding that he would be shying away from buying beyond April as the question remains how long the price rally is going to last.

News item brought to you by S&P Global Platts

Image courtesy of Chris Liverani

Chief Economist Spending Review 2020

Following the announcement by the Chancellor, we thought it might be of interest to our clients to get a summary of the potential impacts. Who better to go to than KPMG, here are the thoughts of Yael Selfin, KPMG Chief Economist

Summary Of Actions

The Chancellor announced further spending on government’s priority areas but left important parts of the new economy out
The winners include health and defence while international aid is set to lose out
The state of public finances will require some consolidation in spending as well as tax rises once the economy regains its growth momentum
While the Spending Review outlined yesterday by the Chancellor covered only one year, it told us something about the Chancellor’s priorities for the rest of this parliament. His spending plans were relatively constrained given the government’s ambition to ‘level up’ the UK economy. And overall, there is a growing recognition that the government will have to reduce the current debt burden, even if the cost of servicing the debt remains low over the medium term.

The state of public finances

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) released its independent forecasts of public finances to coincide with the Chancellor’s statement. They offer sober reading: the deficit is projected to reach £394bn this fiscal year, or 19% of GDP, highest since 1944-45. This will take debt to 105.2% of GDP by the end of this fiscal year in April 2021. While the cost of debt remains very low, thanks to the Bank of England’s record low interest rates and quantitative easing (QE) policy, the current course could see debt increasing every year until 2023-24, reaching 109.4% of GDP.

Public spending initiatives

The bulk of new spending relates to the NHS and schools, along with a big rise in defence spending announced earlier.

COVID-19 accounts for a further £55bn allocated to spending in the 2020-21 fiscal year, but the settlement also provides for a generous real increase in departmental day-to-day spending of 3.8% next fiscal year. Next year will see a large increase in day-to-day spending on health and defence, which will rise by £6.6bn and £4.8bn respectively. These increases came largely at the expense of international aid spending, which is set to fall from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP next year.

On investment, the chancellor touted a figure of over £100 billion pencilled in for 2021-22, a £2.7bn increase on spending this year excluding the effects of COVID. With COVID added in, capital budgets are set to fall by nearly £6bn this year.

Multi-year plans show some missed opportunities. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating the already urgent need to improve digital infrastructure, only a small proportion of planned spending next year will go to areas such as new technologies and supporting infrastructure. Yet these are critical if the UK is to secure a more productive and prosperous future. Instead, the plans showed that capital spending is projected to continue to focus on traditional transport infrastructure.

As we move to a new normal, where people work more from home and shop online, bringing forward spending on programmes such as the Gigabit broadband would have cost relatively little, yet deliver a big impact. Similarly, spending on electric vehicle charging may need to be brought forwards if the government is to meet its target for electric vehicles adoption. And of the £1bn set for carbon capture and storage over the next four years; 90% of spending takes place after March 2022.

An archive of previous Chief Economist’s notes can be found here

Kind regards,

Yael Selfin

KPMG Chief Economist

@yaelselfin

© 2020 KPMG LLP, a UK limited liability partnership and a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative (“KPMG International”), a Swiss entity. All rights reserved. Printed in the United Kingdom.

The KPMG name and logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of KPMG International.

The information contained herein is of a general nature and is not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Although we endeavour to provide accurate and timely information, there can be no guarantee that such information is accurate as of the date it is received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future. No one should act on such information without appropriate professional advice after a thorough examination of the particular situation.  Our updated privacy notice, in line with GDPR, explains what information we gather about you, what we use it for

Image courtesy of Hunters Race

UK Economic Outlook 2020

As we inch towards the end of a truly unique year the UK economic outlook is as much a question on everyone’s lips as vaccines, tiers and further lockdown’s and restrictions.

In their latest UK Economic Outlook KPMG reflect on the past year – one that has been nothing like most of us would have anticipated, and look ahead to what we can expect in 2021.

You can download their report below and read more in the link above.

uk-economic-outlook-nov2020

Report and Image courtesy of KPMG

© 2020 KPMG LLP, a UK limited liability partnership and a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative (“KPMG International”), a Swiss entity. All rights reserved. Printed in the United Kingdom.  The KPMG name and logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of KPMG International.   The information contained herein is of a general nature and is not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Although we endeavour to provide accurate and timely information, there can be no guarantee that such information is accurate as of the date it is received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future. No one should act on such information without appropriate professional advice after a thorough examination of the particular situation.

Our updated privacy notice, in line with GDPR, explains what information we gather about you, what we use it for 

BREXIT IMPORT & EXPORT LEGISLATION – HELP US HELP YOU

Are you ready to comply with Brexit import and export legislation? 

As we inch closer to 1st January 2021 we appreciate you will be doing all you can to ensure your organisation is prepared for the impact of Brexit export/import legislation.

However it will be helpful for us to know how you are doing and if you are confident that you are up to speed with for example Commodity, HS & Tariff Codes and your EORI and your customers EORI numbers?

We have touched on Commodity Codes in a previous blog as well as EORI numbers which you can access by clicking the links; however by completing the questionnaire via the link below it will help us understand your current situation and enable us to help with any concerns you may have.  We very much value your feedback.

IMPORT & EXPORT QUESTIONNAIRE

THANK YOU

Please be advised that Metalogic Ltd are not experts in the Brexit export/import legislation. Any advice given is based on information taken from government websites.

Featured image courtesy of @chuttersnap

Creating Opportunity in Adversity

Implementations, homeworking and enhanced functionality to support your business

This year has been a difficult one but many of our clients have taken the opportunity to move forward with plans that, perhaps under normal circumstances, they would have struggled to resource.  For example, we have seen clients implement homeworking for sales teams, new business intelligence modules to provide access to information allowing faster business decisions to be made (see the article below) and taking advantage of some of the new automated modules in iMetal to improve productivity.

We have also seen 3 new customers who have used the furlough option to train staff, and once returned have gone live on iMetal positively enhancing their businesses. These implementations have been successfully completed via remote delivery, including group classrooms, electronic homework, training videos and also onsite visits carried out with risk assessments and PPE.  Proving that there are always opportunities even under the current taxing circumstances.

We have also seen customers with difficulties and done our best to support them through negotiation and introducing new ways of working to allow them to manage through the challenges they have faced.

While we’ve been busy implementing and supporting we’ve also continued to enhance the functionality in iMetal particularly in the areas that may help with the challenges our customers will face going forward.

This has resulted in enhancements to our 2-D and 3-D optimisation programs providing faster response times to customers.  We have also invested in new shop floor data collection programs as discussed in previous newsletters which provide customers the ability to send and gather data from tablets reducing the requirement for paper. This is being improved with modules that allow goods on vehicles to be confirmed electronically and we have even launched an electronic proof of delivery module that is in testing with customers as we speak.

For customers looking to gather data and cost production processing, we have also introduced a new module that allows process costing and production data to be recorded in greater detail providing analysis of processes and material consumption. Details of this will be in our next newsletter in the meantime should this be of interest please contact your account manager.

Not only have we been busy in the UK we have also expanded our operation in the US.  In addition to our offices in California, we now have an office in Michigan, Toronto and Florida. This has been in response to the growing success of iMetal in the United States and Canada, where we had a successful implementation at Kimco Steels a large Canadian processor and distributor, along with an ongoing implementation at Mandel Metals.

Whilst we have seen growth in the US we are also expanding the team in the UK to support a growing customer base. Despite the current conditions we have seen a number of start-ups in both the general steels and trading business with Hakara Trading being the most recent client to join the iMetal family.

But it’s not been all work, members of the Metalogic team have taken time out to support their community, raise funds and learn new skills!  Geoff Kendell is raising funds with a 100 mile cycle ride for the Alzheimer’s Society, Lynda Middleman is supporting Relay for Life Warrington Cancer Research and Nigel Johnson has taken up flying lessons! 

We have also had one or two new arrivals in the team including developer team member Martin Brown becoming a grandfather, although due to lockdown and the fact his grandson was born in Sydney Australia he has yet to meet him in the flesh!

With homeworking becoming normal for many of us we have been busy providing consultation and presentations to groups of companies who have been looking to move workers out of the office into a homeworking environment.  As a company we started homeworking back in 2006 and now our whole Jonas Metals group which has over 50 employees, 6000 users and nearly 500 sites worldwide all work from home. Using this experience of supporting clients from a single user up to nearly 300 users we have provided procedures, technology and applications advice to assist companies in their journey from office to home office.

As we enter a few dark months with a fair amount of uncertainty for many, please be assured that due to the investments we have made in our homeworking technology, our staff training and our ongoing commitment to supporting you we are here to help.  Please do contact either our support desk or your Account Manager if there’s anything you would like to discuss in relation to technology or some of the challenges of homeworking.

Featured image courtesy of Razvan Chisu @nullplus

iMetal customers access fast reporting through a new business intelligence partnership

A new partnership with Metalogic (part of the Jonas Metals Group) and Phocas business intelligence will help metal manufacturers, processors and distributors get the most from their data and maximise their investment in their iMetal ERP solution.  

Metalogic is the major supplier of specialist software to the metals market in the UK, and Europe and Phocas is a data and financial analytics software provider, servicing the specific needs of manufacturing and distribution businesses globally.  The two companies are a great match as the software integrates seamlessly together, and both have industry-specific expertise. 

Decision-makers need to be able to access consolidated data sources quickly so they can determine the effect of operational decisions on financial performance and address the needs of customers. 

 iMetal customers expect the best selection of tried and tested software to extend the functionality of their ERP system. Phocas is a good fit for iMetal customers with more than 20 years’ experience solving the data problems of manufacturers and distributors. 

Phocas business intelligence software has dashboards, databases and metrics ready to populate for new users. The intuitive user interface of Phocas makes understanding data simpler from identifying cost savings and growing margins, to optimising processes and reporting. 

 For more information about the partnership and to view the on demand recording click here. 

How to harness the critical asset of metal manufacturers, processors and distributors: data  

BI and analytics strategies are more important to businesses’ daily operations today than ever before. Why? Decision-makers need access to accurate information to maintain business continuity as well as understand the implication of operational decisions on financial performance in real-time. That’s before you get to improving efficiencies, finding new revenue streams, optimising supply chains and reducing expenses.  

 The new partnership between Jonas Metals (Metalogic) and Phocas business intelligence will help iMetal ERP customers to gain maximum value from their data. Using iMetal plus Phocas business intelligence, metal manufacturers and distributors can develop new strategies to stay competitive, support healthy decision-making and be on top of business performance. 

 John Padbury, the General Manager of Jonas Metals (Metalogic) UK helped establish the partnership between the two software companies. 

“Phocas is a good fit for our customers and software. It’s an established global business intelligence solution that is simple to use, allowing users to report on iMetal data and create their own dashboards without the need for assistance,”  said Padbury. “We wanted an out-of-the-box solution for customers. Phocas can deliver this as well bringing valuable industry knowledge. Phocas has a strong track record servicing industry-specific ERPs.” 

In a recent study of BI users, Phocas business intelligence had the highest adoption rate across a business, which means many people within a company use the software. Phocas works through the creation of specific databases from the ERP data such as sales, purchasing or finance, which continue to refresh whenever the ERP data changes. People can choose to analyse specific parts of the business or the entire operations. Many companies also add external data sources into Phocas such as call centre information or Google analytics, so Phocas acts as the single source of truth of all company-wide information. 

Jason Bradshaw from Phocas Business Intelligence is the data analytics expert assigned to iMetal customers and will be working alongside Jonas Metals (Metalogic) UK to help educate customers about the new analytics and reporting tool. 

 Bradshaw says “Phocas builds software with a strong commitment in mind — to ensure the software is easy to use —and to make people feel good about their data.  Phocas appreciates the opportunity to partner with a trusted ERP supplier like Jonas Metals (Metalogic) and help its customers get the most from their technology investments.” 

To commence the partnership between the two software providers, they will jointly host a webinar for iMetal customers to learn more about Phocas data analytics. The session is called: Empower your business with company-wide analytics 

 Join Metalogic and Phocas Software to find out how we can help you to: 

• seamlessly integrate Phocas with your existing iMetal ERP solution
• consolidate your data into a single source of truth
• provide automated, interactive, and real-time dashboard reports
• create relevant KPI views for key staff to drive decision-making
• uncover automated consolidation and presentation of your financial month end reports

Featured image courtesy of @Markusspiske

How to improve your business productivity with iMetal during lockdown

Implement a new ERP system whilst the country is in full lockdown during a worldwide pandemic you say? 

Whilst your Project Manager and Supplier Project Lead are both working from home? 

Where social distancing means there are fewer people in the office and you can’t get close to people to help them use the system? 

You’d be crazy to! 

Unless of course that new system gave you the ability for flexible working including working from home.

Established in 2006, by 2019 Benbow Steels had grown to a £12million turnover business but had developed so quickly that the business processes had evolved with tweaks and bolt ons to accommodate growth.  There wasn’t one IT “system”, instead there was a process based on emails, word documents, excel spreadsheets and an Access database.  It worked well because it was used by a well-oiled, experienced team; everyone knew what information was needed, by whom, and when. But the system was a heartbeat away from failure: one new team member; one less team member; a few more major customers, and there was no room for expansion which is exactly what we had planned for 2020.

We looked at a number of different systems and suppliers but we knew that we needed an IT partner that could understand, and work with, our idiosyncrasies. We needed a system that was adaptable to our needs now and in the future: an “off the shelf” system would just not do the job. As our previous systems did exactly what we wanted, often with one document meeting 4 or 5 needs at once, it was essential that the new system could replicate our business exactly as we wanted it to.  Of course, we also wanted to benefit from an experienced company who knew alternative ways of doing things so we could improve our processes.  Metalogic and iMetal fitted the brief.

During the end of 2019 we designed our theoretical processes for iMetal along with Metalogic’s Project Lead Nigel Johnson.  Our planned Go Live was initially mid February but we hadn’t yet proven the system capable of meeting our needs so we postponed it to mid June, just before the summer holidays kicked in and staff took annual leave.

In April we made the decision to go ahead with Go Live, based on the presumption that some of the limiting measures of social distancing would be sufficiently relaxed.  Given the short notice of most of these measures it would have been impossible to make a decision based on Government announcements.

Training would begin in May so we set up a socially distanced training room, laying out stations so that trainees were 2 metres away from each other at all times; all facing away from each other. Stations were named and the trainees would use the same station at every session.  The training plan was amended so that only 2 people shared a station, effectively creating a “bubble” for each station. 

The trainer, and some other trainees, stayed in their own home, or office, and dialled into a video conference using Google Meets. The training plan was extended to take account of fewer people being trained at any one time and to account for a slower pace due to technology restrictions. 

Would I recommend training virtually? As a whole strategy no, but it did have advantages which would have made it excellent as a “top up” solution. We managed to ensure everyone received the training they needed but the pressures increased as the training progressed. The biggest downside was that it was difficult to know how people were responding to the training as “silence” on the end of the line could be misinterpreted.  Some training sessions also took significantly longer than they should have done as questions and problems had to be responded to one at a time whilst people shared their screens and talked through issues.  

The training was flexible however and it worked well to be able to train people who couldn’t be in the office, for example, those who were at home due to child care or shielding. It also meant our Trainer didn’t need to be at our site for small top up sessions so these were more flexible to organise.

In the build up to Go Live the lack of visibility of the Internal Project Lead and Metalogic’s Project Manager proved an issue with the team. Usually a lot of activity is seen during the build up and the business team are reassured that activity is happening and the project is therefore in hand. In this case, the business was ticking along exactly as normal with no visibility of the enormous amount of work that was going on behind the scenes. Phone calls and communication emails can only partially fill this void. Sometimes, issues that came up with the business team during a typically busy day could be forgotten about by the time the project team were in touch. This meant that some project issues got missed or delayed in being responded to.

During Go Live week Metalogic’s Project Manager was on site for the first few days as he normally would have been, but he had to be based in an office away from the main office as this was too small to accommodate social distancing.  Whilst he was in the main office, PPE was used where appropriate and pointers were used to demonstrate items on the system.  All of this made the situation much more difficult as, not only did it limit how much people could be helped, it also meant the reassurance any team needs during Go Live just couldn’t be given due to a lack of physical presence. It did however mean that the team quite often needed to find a way of getting on with things on their own which advanced their knowledge, and independence from support, much more quickly.

Overall the system implementation went well: we achieved our goal, with our customers only noticing the positives in most cases: all of our staff ended the first week relatively unscathed and positive about the system and the future: the system does exactly what we intended it to with only a couple hiccups that we’re still ironing out.  Overall it was a huge success, regardless of the limitations of social distancing. Would we do it again under the same circumstances? The Managing Director says yes, it was a huge achievement and well worth doing:

“We would like to thank Samantha Benbow, for sharing her recent journey into the iMetal family during the first lockdown.  Samantha successfully took on the role of project managing the implementation whilst juggling the day to day of the business, lockdown and family life. Well done Sam.”  Metalogic Ltd

Featured image courtesy of @thisisengineering

Lockdown Cloud Backup Keep your systems safe

With the rapid changes in the business landscape brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, the majority of our customers have made considerable changes to their day-to-day operations. This has included home working, material collections and short term closures.

The Metalogic team has been working hard to support these changes, setting up VPN’s and even installing the counter sales modules for some clients to assist in the implementation of collection systems.

In many cases due to the move to home working offices, premises have been left unattended or very short-staffed. Therefore, although their teams have been working from home safely, IT equipment and in particular servers, have been left operating but unattended without administration and maintenance.  This means that in some cases backups are being implemented to single media without change and system management is not taking place.

For those customers that have our Facilities Management services, we can confirm that we continue to monitor the servers to ensure no faults are indicated and that backups are being completed successfully. 

If you currently do not subscribe to this service and would like to discuss the options please contact Nigel Johnson our PS team leader on [email protected] or via the support line on (0) 844 257 1106

Another unfortunate effect of the lockdown policy, owing to buildings being left unattended, is the opportunity for elements of our society to cause mischief. 

We have recently had a report of a number of incidents where customers have had a break-in and network and IT equipment were removed, causing problems with the day to day operation and additional stress in these already stressful times.

Therefore, if you currently do not have an offsite data storage solution and have concerns regarding the safety of your data or IT equipment and are looking to ensure that a backup of your data is safely being kept, Metalogic can provide the facility of cloud backups.  This will provide daily copies of the data to the cloud on an agreed rolling retention period, ensuring that multiple copies are retained offsite until you return to the office.

If you require further information or want to discuss any other IT requirements during these strange and unusual times please do not hesitate to contact Metalogic Support team, either by emailing [email protected] or calling (0) 844 257 1106