Caught in a Steel Trap

Author:  Shot Peening Staff
Source:  The Shot Peener magazine, Vol 19 / Issue 2, Spring 2005
Doc ID:  2005010
Year of Publication:  2005
Abstract:  
The steel shortage has been a global phenomenon with causes so complex, so massive and so inevitable that the timing for solutions is nearly impossible to predict, much less obtain. It has affected all of us that depend on steel shot-whether you make it or use it. A broad picture of the reasons Contributors to the steel shortage are improving and expanding economies worldwide, the shaky U.S. steel industry, and higher fuel and shipping costs. Nothing, however, has shaken the steel industry in the past few years like China's voracious appetite for steel-the steel needed to feed its rapidly-expanding economy. Since 2001, China's consumption of steel has increased by 30 million tons annually to reach 250 million tons in 2003. This keeps China No. 1 in steel usage in the world, surpassing the combined sum of those in the United States and Japan. The International Steel and Iron Association predicted that by 2005, China will consume 31 percent of the world's total. The China Daily Global Newspaper predicts that China's steel consumption will not reach its peak until 2010.