Should the government do more to help the steel industry or....

Bear said:
Its natural for people to generally want to buy a cheaper or a higher quality product depending on your financial circumstances, but some don't even consider it when there is a British made competing product within the model/price range they are interested in.

The rest of your post is nonsense. People have a choice, only they decide not to support British firms and then moan when they go down the pan.
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The first part of your post is wrong. People don't want a cheap OR high quality products, they want both. People have a choice over what they buy and when British firms don't make products they want they don't choose them. People's choices are based on their assessment of the value proposition and that will be based on many factors depending on the goods involved.

This isn't an opinion, it's logical reality.
 
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wildman said:
apparnatly yes

http://www.eef.org.uk/uksteel/About-the-industry/Steel-facts/Steel-markets-UK.htm

UK produces enough steel to supply all its own needs, its just that Chinese state sponsored steel is chepaer
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We produce about 12 million tonnes of steel pa and import in 400 million? (edit : need confirmation of this), doesn't sound like we produce enough of our own?

It was 400 - 600 thousand tonnes of Chinese steel we import

Another statistic

Steel production makes up 1% of Britain's manufacturing output and 0.1% of the country's economic output.
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From a purely economic perspective, does it seem worth propping up with state aid?
 
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The private sector always argues that government should not interfere with the free market. Since the steel industry is part of the private sector, government should respect its wishes and allow it to die without any interference.
 
As a construction professional of some 40+ years, i can say that all of my design to date has been based on British (BS) and latterly British and European (EN) steel sections.

While my design software allows steels from China and various other Asian areas to be selected, Chinese steel sections differ in dimension and hence section properties from BS / EN.

I expect that they do roll to BS / EN standard sections to gain access to our markets otherwise there would be an enormous cost to clients specifying steel buildings to redesign to other section sizes.

I am not aware of designs using Chinese sections although I do recognise that imported steel has long been a resource in the construction industry.

Reinforcing steel for concrete has long been imported from eastern europe even prior to their accession to the EC. This is largely recycled steels though.

A case in point back in the eighties was the steelwork for the box beams on the Gade Valley viaduct on the M25 was italian and from memory not very good.
 
PMKeates said:
The first part of your post is wrong. People don't want a cheap OR high quality products, they want both.
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People can want what they want but doesn't mean they can have it. Cheap and high quality more often than not does not exist as genuine quality costs money and hence the higher price tag, I'm not talking about perceived quality.

If people don't want to buy British made products then fine it's their choice, but it is then ridiculous to then complain about the firms going out of business when no one wants to buy their products
 
Evangelion said:
The private sector always argues that government should not interfere with the free market. Since the steel industry is part of the private sector, government should respect its wishes and allow it to die without any interference.
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Until of course that state offered billions to the banking sector.
 
Interesting Radio prog this morning. The USA puts on a tariff of 286% on Chinese steel as they complain of dumping. The EU has a rule against this BUT was trying to remove it to put similar tariffs on Chinese steel. One country objected to this and it did not happen. The name of this country. BRITAIN. This country wanted Chinese investment and the quid pro quo was to prevent measures against Chinese steel. The crisis has been made therefore by Cameron.
 
OldCoals said:
How is it different, the banks get themselves into a mess, nobody forced them to trade debt.
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Banks were recoverable with just a change of trading policy and it would have effected millions.

Steel industry is bleeding money and a bailout with no further changes is just an expensive handout that effects only a fraction in comparison, as well as offers no mid term/long term solution.

Where will be the industry be 5 years from now if it was bailed out?
 
It's too big a risk, strategically (defense, infrastructure etc), basically if we lose it we are at the mercy of the global market.

Not viable for a major economy to remain that.
 
Yes/no
Certainly shouldn't throw any money at current owners who show they won't invest or modernise, so utter waste of money.
Should invest either by buying out at a very cheapo price, attracting new company or building a public factory for production of very high end steel, that I believe only Japan can do atm.
 
Glaucus said:
What has any of that got to do with this topic?
Or are you trying to say we import sub standard steel and then engineers do no testing on it. In which case haha.
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I am saying use imported steels at your risk but do ensure that they are fully tested.

We had a safety alert today about some very high tensile bolts proposed for a tower crane base failing in London due to hydrogen embrittlement. The bolts were suitable for the tensile loading but were over the hardness specification and had not been tested or certified for that by the manufacturer. Luckily no injuries or fatalities ensued due to proper safeguards here
 
Way too many severe duty valves are made from Chinese forgings these days and the likelihood of crappy materials specs is quite high. It is a real shame but much of British industry has chased price over quality and then paid for it in ongoing maintenance costs over the years. I work on 30-40 year old British kit and it's still going strong but too much Indian or Chinese gear barely makes it out of the warranty. The death of the British steel industry will do nothing to improve that situation.
 
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