TPT January 2008

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From the AmericaS
January 2008 104 ›
6 per cent, to $4.35 billion from $4.11 billion in third-quarter 2006.
The results included a $27 million pretax charge related to inventory
acquired with the welded pipe maker Lone Star Technologies. During
the quarter, USS also said it would pay about $1.1 billion for the
Canadian steel maker Stelco.
AK Steel is looking very much healthier
AK Steel Holding Corp said October 23 that its third-quarter profit
more than quadrupled from the same quarter of 2006, when the
company was in the midst of a nearly 13-month lockout. The West
Chester, Ohio-based steel maker reported net earnings of $108.4
million for the quarter ended September 30, compared with $26
million in third-quarter 2006. Sales totaled $1.72 billion for the
quarter, up 11 per cent from $1.55 billion a year before. For the first
nine months of 2007, AK made $281 million, compared with $61.3
million the year before.
Higher shipments and selling prices, as well as a tax benefit,
boosted profits, the company said. AK Steel (formerly Armco) makes
flat-rolled carbon steel, stainless and electrical steel, and carbon
and stainless tubular products. The company’s average selling
price for steel was $1,074 per ton in the third quarter of 2007, up 5
per cent from the year-before period. Shipments were up 5 per cent
in the quarter to 1.6 million tons.
Since ending the lockout at its Middletown Works, and cutting some
1,000 jobs, the company settled a lawsuit over health care costs
for Middletown retirees and created a $633 million, retiree-managed
trust fund that relieved it of about half of its $2.1 billion legacy costs.
Recently, AK announced a $180 million investment in equipment to
lower production costs and increase capacity at two specialty steel
operations in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Elsewhere in metals. . .
› US aluminium maker Alcoa said on October 4 that it would sell
its automotive castings business by the end of 2007. Pittsburgh-
based Alcoa also said it planned to revamp its electrical and
electronic solutions business in the Americas and Europe. Together
with the recent sale of Alcoa’s stake in the Chinese aluminium
maker Chalco for $1.8 billion, these moves are intended to enable
the company to focus on its core business of mining bauxite and
producing alumina.
Mining
Free precious-metals mining on US public
lands is challenged
A bill in the US House of Representatives would change a 135-year-
old law to require the hard-rock mining industry to begin paying
royalties on gold, silver, and other minerals extracted from lands
held in the public trust. Characterizing the existing policy as “a pirate
story with the public-lands profiteers robbing the American people
blind”, Rep. Nick Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of