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Manufacturing Committee

Steel prices set to soar on iron ore deal.

Financial Times
March 31 2010
By Javier Blas in London and Peter Smith in Sydney

Global steel prices are set to rise by up to a third, pushing up the cost of everyday goods from cars to domestic appliances, after miners and steelmakers yesterday agreed a ground-breaking change in the iron ore price system.

The deal by Vale of Brazil and Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton with Japanese and Chinese mills marks the end of the 40-year-old benchmark system of annual contracts and lengthy price negotiations. The industry instead agreed to move to quarterly contracts linked to the nascent iron ore spot market.

"The benchmark system has ended. There is no comeback," said a senior mining executive directly involved in the talks.

The top ore miners stand to profit greatly in the short term from the new price system. One executive estimated that the profits of the big three producers, Vale, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, would be boosted by at least $5bn (£3.3bn) this year.

The new system is a response to last year’s stalemate in the negotiations between miners and Chinese steelmakers, when both sides were unable to reach an agreement on annual prices. The balance of pricing power has shifted in the miners’ favour due to the emergence of China as a voracious consumer over the past 10 years.

Brendan Harris, a mining analyst at Macquarie in Sydney, said the shift was a "momentous" day. "It’s not every day that the pricing terms for one of the core commodities in world trade change," he said. Steel accounts for 95 per cent of the world’s metal consumption and iron ore is the main ingredient in steelmaking.

The new price system will lift the cost of iron ore to Asian steelmakers to about $110-$120 a tonne during the April-June period, up between 80 and 100 per cent from the $60-a-tonne level at which the 2009-10 annual contracts were settled.

The steelmakers said they would compensate for the increase in raw materials costs by raising steel prices by up to a third. Some companies have already raised prices in anticipation of the move in iron ore.

US manufacturing sector growth speeds up in March

The Associated Press
April 1, 2010
By Tali Arbel

NEW YORK — The U.S. manufacturing sector expanded in March at its strongest pace in 5 1/2 years, a private trade group said Thursday, as industrial companies continue to lead the recovery from the recession.

The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing executives, said its gauge of industrial companies rose to 59.6 in March from 56.5 in February. It is the eighth straight month of expansion and the fastest growth since July 2004, when the index was 59.9.

Economists polled by Thomson Reuters had expected the measure to read 57.

A level above 50 indicates growth.

Factories are boosting production for exports and their customers are slowing the drawdown of their inventories, helping power the economic recovery worldwide.

Manufacturing surveys Thursday in China, Britain and the 16 countries using the euro all showed factory activity surging.

Seventeen of the 18 industries that the ISM surveys reported growth last month, led by the apparel sector. Only makers of plastics and rubber products reported contraction.

New orders, a signal of future production, and existing production also grew faster in March. Manufacturers said their inventories grew after 46 straight months of contraction.

Letting inventories rise is a signal that companies expect factory activity and orders to increase.

The prices paid by manufacturers also grew at the fastest pace since August 2008 as energy costs have risen over the past two months.