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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2008
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the fuel-efficient small cars whose popularity has soared
along with the record-high gasoline prices in the US.
In an interesting aside on Chrysler’s Chinese partner
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Chery Automobile Corp, Ford Motor (Dearborn, Michigan)
on 7
th
July declined comment on a report in the Chinese
business journal Caijing that Chery had expressed
interest in buying Ford’s Volvo unit. Unidentified sources
were quoted to the effect that Chery is contemplating
a bid for the US company’s stylish Swedish brand.
Ford has said that it is seeking to improve Volvo’s sales,
not to sell it.
Steel
The Russian metals and mining company OAO Severstal
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said it has completed its acquisition of WCI Steel
(Warren, Ohio), which is to be known as Severstal
Warren Inc. Severstal, which gains 1.2 million metric
tons of annual steelmaking capacity with WCI, said on
7
th
July that the acquisition would solidify its position
in the North American market. Under the terms of the
agreement, originally announced in May, Severstal
will pay $140 million in cash and also redeem some
$100 million of outstanding WCI notes due in 2016.
Severstal also recently purchased the Sparrows Point
steel plant outside Baltimore, promising to invest a
half-billion dollars to update it and begin running it at
capacity. The Russian giant is also bidding against
Essar Steel, an Indian firm, for control of Esmark, which
runs a mill in West Virginia. In addition, the company is
expanding its Severcorr plant in Mississippi. The facility
is one of some half-dozen steel mills currently being
expanded in the US.
Nucor Corporation (Charlotte, North Carolina), which
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makes more steel in the US than any other company,
continues to pursue a long-term goal of increasing
control over its raw materials supply. The company said
it has applied for a permit to build a state-of-the-art iron
making facility in St James Parish, Louisiana. While the
project, Nucor Steel Louisiana, is not a certainty, the
planning is well advanced. Nucor contemplates one
of the most modern iron making facilities in the world,
employing emissions-reduction technologies to produce
3 million tons of pig iron annually. The facility is to use
advanced heat-recovery coke technology to capture
waste heat and use it to produce energy, making the
operation self-sufficient in power.
In other news of Nucor, the company on 12
th
June
announced that its wholly owned subsidiary Harris Steel,
Inc had signed an agreement to purchase Ambassador
Steel Corp (Auburn, Indiana) for approximately $185 million
in cash. Ambassador is one of the largest independent
fabricators and distributors of concrete reinforcing steel
and related products in the United States. In 2007, it
shipped 422,000 tons of fabricated rebar and distributed
another 228,000 tons of reinforcing steel. With the
Ambassador acquisition, said Daniel R DiMicco, Nucor’s
chairman, his company was “enhancing its national
footprint in the rebar fabrication market.”
Dorothy Fabian – Features Editor