TPT September 2014

Global Marketplace

› United States Steel Corp on 2 June announced it would indefinitely idle two tube manufacturing facilities – in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and Bellville, Texas – in early August. The Pittsburgh-based steel giant said the idling of “these loss-making operations” would enable more profitable operation of its remaining eight domestic tubular facilities. “US Steel remains fully committed to the tubular products business and to serving our tubular customers,” the company’s president and CEO, Mario Longhi, said in a statement. “We will continue to fight unfair trade by foreign competitors who are creating a detrimental impact and threat to middle-class paying manufacturing jobs.” US Steel has tubular production and finishing facilities in Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio and Texas. Economics Japan’s corporate tax of more than 30%, highest among industrialised nations, will be cut to spur growth Japan in June announced plans to cut its corporate tax rate – nearly 36% for large companies operating in Tokyo – to

has built overcapacity and this capacity needs consolidation,” Lakshmi Mittal said in June. “Some of the foreign investors would like to wait and watch what’s going to happen to these overcapacities.” Elsewhere in steel . . . › The owner of a steel pipe mill in Bay St Louis, Mississippi, has filed for bankruptcy protection. PSL North America LLC, which began operations in 2008, said it planned to sell itself at bankruptcy auction for $100mn to another pipe maker, Jindal SAW Ltd, or a higher bidder. Indian pipe maker PSL Ltd owns 83% of PSL North America, with two other companies holding the remainder. As reported in the Hattiesburg American (22 June), the mill said in court papers that it hopes under new ownership to move into making concrete lined water pipe, a business it says is less competitive and more profitable than OCTG. An estimated $7mn would, PSL North America said, enable it to modify its factory to start producing water pipe by the end of this year and deliver a trial order in 2015. PSL North America said it lost $30mn after much of the steel it bought to build pipe for the Florida Gas Transmission natural gas pipeline could not withstand stipulated pressures. It is suing the Austrian company said to have procured the defective steel.

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S eptember 2014