BIR World Mirror Ferrous 10/2010

PRESIDENT’S REMARKS

by Christian Rubach, TSR Recycling

First of all, I would like to express my delight that the recent BIR Convention in Brussels attracted over 900 delegates, many of whom were involved in the ferrous scrap business. Our plenary session was extremely well attended - a fact which, of course, can be attributed in part to the quality of our main guest speaker Stefan Schilbe, Director and Chief Economist of HSBC Bank in Germany, who gave a presentation entitled “Global perspectives: The outlook for the major economies 2011, including USA, the Euro-zone and China”.

So far, this year has not been too bad for our industry and some of us in the ferrous scrap market experienced our best-ever first half to a year. In the first six months of 2010, scrap consumption increased so rapidly that collections struggled to keep pace. This temporary imbalance between scrap availability and steel mill demand fuelled strong price increases.

However, we now appear to be sailing in much calmer waters. The increase in world steel production is likely to be quite small in the coming months and may even stagnate in the so-called Western economies, although scrap demand in some regions seems to be recovering already. (...)

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