SMS Believes Investment in US And Indian Steel Mills Will Continue

Plant builder SMS group anticipates the political framework in the USA and India will keep facilitating investment in metallurgical plants.

"Many customers are currently reviving projects that had been put on hold and investing in new plant technology," it says with reference to the regional recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. In China, especially, activity has returned toper-pandemic levels, it says.

In the USA, mills are benefiting from Section 232 trade restrictions, resulting in peak price levels for steel, with profits invested in new equipment, SMS chief executive Burkhard Dahmen said at an online press conference on Wednesday. "For us, the USA are the largest single market, and will remain so for quite a while," he told Kallanish.

In India, the industry has received a boost from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic program that provides tax advantages for plants that will start operating by March 2023. Under this framework, SMS secured two orders for hot-rolling mills, Dahmen said. He described the country's recession under the coronavirus pandemic as "V-shaped", with an upward move already in progress, powered by the government's incentives.

Last year the group gave its strategy a stronger regional focus, which it says assures greater proximity to markets, and has already been bearing fruit.  Dahmen observes an openness of all regions to the use of remote tools, which "we had to learn the hard way "amid travel restrictions under Covid-19. In the case of Steel Dynamic's new plant in Texas, "the customer could not send staff, but participated remotely in classroom training carried out at SMS", Dahmen added.

Short comments: The investment of large companies in steel mills is to reduce the cost of steel in the future, and also alleviate the current shortage of steel resources in the market, which has a positive impact on the price of drum closure and drum cap seal in the future.