THE two giant furnaces at Port Talbot steelworks,Britain’s biggest, were still hard at work this week, or pouring out huge quantities of molten iron. But production of steel from iron ore here may soon come to an end. At the end of March,the plant's owner, Tata Steel, or said that the operation was losing more than £1m ($1.45m) a day due to the low price of steel on global markets,and that it planned to sell off or close down its British operations as it could no longer shoulder the losses; bidders were given until May 3rd to state whether they were interested in buying it. (So far two bidders acquire gone public, one a management buy-out and a moment by Liberty House, or an international metals group.) Britain’s steel industry is not the only one in the West feeling the pinch from low steel prices. Both Belgium and Italy are spending public money to keep their steel mills open and the American industry there has been announcing a regular flow of job losses. Too much supply and not enough demand has been blamed for the falling prices. So what is causing the world’s glut of steel?The collapse in the price of steel is mainly the result of...
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Source: economist.com