FTW pick: Haemorrhaging steel industry seeks protection

SA’s steel-making industry is grinding not so slowly to a halt, amid industry screams of complaint about cheap Chinese imports.

The country’s second-largest steel maker, Evraz Highveld, is at a complete standstill, while our biggest, ArcelorMittal, is described as being “in a profound crisis”.

So much so that its top man, Lakshmi Mittal, has reportedly visited SA to plead with President Jacob Zuma for import protection, at the same time as Arcelor announced it was mothballing its Vereeniging long-products mill.

And cheap Chinese imports have now been a decade-long pressure on products manufactured in SA, according to a study by the Southern Africa Labour Development and Research Unit, with findings from 44 manufacturing industries.

And the results were proof of just how these cheap imports had created relatively slow growth in output, loss of profits and a decline in employment in the SA manufacturing industry.
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