What Makes the Steel Industry Tick?

You know the scene. It opens every Middle School video on almost any material. A happy, smiling, foursquare family sits obliviously around the kitchen table enjoying breakfast or dinner. The announcer encourages us to imagine a world without the subject material... Then, in a flash, the material is removed from the scene and the family members all find themselves sitting on the floor, dazed and glum, with no utensils, no stove, no fridge, no pans, no light cord. They want their steel back.

It's a hackneyed snapshot of the value of steel to the nuclear consumer family and it's true. But steel is more important than that. Steel is the second most voluminously produced commodity after oil. In 2018, the world consumed some 1.6 billion tonnes, more than twice global consumption in the year 2000. Recent demand has been powered by the rapid expansion of China's economy, just as steel has been one of the foundation materials in the building of every industrial society. It was a product of the British Industrial Revolution in the late 18th Century and has powered the industrialization of every country since. Not only is contemporary life dependent on high quality steel products, but the entire configuration of an industrialized economy and its future development of products and infrastructure relies on it. The four factors discussed here are what makes the industry tick.