ISRI GULF COAST: SDI Considers Alternatives

EAF steelmakers often have complaints with the price of their steel scrap feedstock. Keith Busse, president and CEO of Steel Dynamics Inc., Fort Wayne, Ind., believes his company is doing something about the situation.

Speaking to attendees of the ISRI Gulf Coast Chapter Convention, held in New Orleans in mid-June, Busse provided an update of the company’s alternative iron methods as well as news of an attempt to create a new scrap pricing index.

Busse said SDI continues to believe its Iron Dynamics liquid scrap substitute product “is a technology that can hedge against the high cost of scrap and pig iron.”

Busse said the process is “running fairly well” at the company’s Butler, Ind., mill, at an annual production rate of about 360,000 tons per year of liquid pig iron. The system can also produce hot briquettes in a price range of from $130 to $170 per ton, he remarked.

Also being adopted by the company is the Mesabi Nugget (ITMK3) technology, which has been tested at a pilot plant. Additionally, SDI is seeking the appropriate air permits to produce the alternative iron nuggets at its Butler mill and at a remote location in Silver Bay, Minn.

Busse described the nuggets as being made from iron oxide concentrate combined with coal to make musket-ball-sized pellets that are magnetic, can be continuously charged, yield 96 percent metallic iron and function as a scrap substitute. The Mesabi technology “holds much more promise, I believe, than our Iron Dynamics system,” said Busse.

While such technology may help contain SDI’s scrap prices, so could another effort that SDI is part of in cooperation with Management Science Associates Inc. (MSA), Pittsburgh.

Busse remarked that ten steelmakers are reporting scrap purchasing data for several grades of ferrous scrap to MSA, who will collect the data in an effort to develop a “Raw Material Data Aggregation Service” that can provide steelmakers with “transparent” information on scrap prices.