dri a question of scale, page-5

Hi Guys

Thanks for your comments and apologies for not making my point clearly enough.

Recent DRI announcements seem to me to be increasingly large in scale in comparison to APG's planned effort. I take the point re recycling v's 'straight start DRI'. But my comment re scale for both recycling and 'straight start' DRI are, I believe, still valid. So, if I confine my comments to recycling for steel plants:

1. Fastmet (Midrex) have 3 plants operating. 'The first commercial Fastmet plant was commissioned at the Hirohata Works No.1 of Nippon Steel in April, 2000 and Hirohata Works No.2 in February, 2005 with material processing capacities of 190000 tpa each plant. The second plant established was Kobe?s Steel?s Kakogawa Works started from April, 2001 having a material processing capacity of 16000 tpa'.

2. ITmk3 (Midrex's sucessor to Fastmet) will be 'processing 500,000 metric tons pa iron in steel mill waste'.

3. Intec (INL) 'Liuzhou Project: Steel Waste Recycling
The most advanced of the Intec Process projects in China, the first phase of this project is expected to recycle 50,000 tpa of steel industry dust containing 25% Fe, 7%Zn, 1.5% Pb and 250ppm In. The Pre-feasibility study is complete, and subject to financial, economic and technical due diligence, this project is to be developed via the Green Resources subscription agreement outlined above.

A Joint venture (Liuzhou Green Resources Dust Environmental Utilization Co., Ltd.) was formed in October 2009 between Green Resources (51%) and a company controlled by Liugang-Liuzhou Iron and Steel (Group) Company (?Liugang?), one of China?s most successful emerging steel producers (www.liuzhousteel.com). Later phases of the project envisage capacity increases to as much as 1,000,000 tpa'.

4. There are others playing in this field (recycling ferrous waste from steel mills). However I think I must have lost that research in the move North. I just can't find it (along with other sundry stuff). From memory, because I can't be bothered looking it all up again) HYL, Circored, SMS semag are in there, as well as some other players. These are not major players - but they've got at least 1 run (plant)on the board...

I'm just saying that I think scale could be a problem...


cheers
Lekki