Scrap suppliers and consumers: trust and stereotypes

摘要

Robert Garvey's column, "Building Trust between Scrap Suppliers and Consumers" (May), actually is a telling glimpse into the mentality most antithetical to the creation of trust. With Mr. Garvey, we scrap producers laud the progress made by EAF-based steelmakers. In the furnace itself, the move away from costly electrical energy and toward less costly chemical energy (oxygen and natural gas) augurs well for the min-imills' drive to control their direct costs of operation. This also made it possible for EAF-based steelworks to broaden the potential range of raw materials capable of efficiently being converted from iron into steel. But the real story lies in the improvements downstream of the furnace. The bold experimentation and capital investment in sophisticated casters, ladle-metallurgy stations, and degassing and carburization units, as well as an almost unbelievable advance in the slipperiness of mold powders, has produced electrically made steels whose mechanical and chemical characteristics strongly compete with integrated-mill steels. The quality gap has narrowed and may confidently be expected to continue doing so.