The GAGAs

The Galvanizers Association are currently inviting entries for the 2012 galvanizing awards. Six categories including Architectural, Detail, Sustainable, Engineering,  Duplex and a new award for this year International are up for grabs. Applications must be recieved before 20th April 2012 and the only criteria is that your project must have been completed after January 2010. A £3000 prize fund awaits as well as a galvanized watering can for the outright winner, how good will that look on the mantlepiece. All that’s required to enter is a few high quality photos and some background information on the project and you can enter online here http://www.galvanizing.org.uk/awards/welcome_to_gagas.

The Gate Post recommends that the background information doesn’t include any pieces of your project that were returned a different shape than when they went out, were sent out from the galvanizers to someone else or cut straight through your rigger gloves as soon as they were handled.

Chinese to become less reliant on steel imports

One of the objectives of this blog is to keep and eye on the current trends in commodity prices that are likely to affect readers.  The current climate makes it more and more difficult to pass the cost of raw materials on to end users and it is very likely as has been happening  in a lot of cases that people take the hit and the profits become smaller while overheads get higher. Of course all this does is increase the possibility of cashflow problems later down the line. It can often seem like a mystery to most of us when our  stockholders inform us of price increases. Either it’s too much demand hiking the prices up or too little demand hiking the prices up and anyway it’s all down to the Chinese, its no wonder with such logic that the conspiracy theorists have been hard at work.

Recently however things do seem to have levelled out a little and hopefully this is just the beginning of a new age of stability. According to Zhu Jimin chairman of the China Iron and Steel Association the development of China’s domestic iron ore mines had been speeded up and was now growing at an annual rate of about 20%, gradually reducing China’s dependence on overseas imports. A little cohesion for the longer term would go a great way to easing the headaches of the small business person, here’s hoping.