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Speaker 1: Warning this week from the Southern African Institute of Steel

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Speaker 1: Construction that plans by the International Trade Administration Commission to

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Speaker 1: impose a set of tariffs on certain steel imports would

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Speaker 1: actually harm the industry. Emmanuel gabrem Scale is the CEO

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Speaker 1: of the Southern African Institute of Steel Construction. Emmanuel, good evening,

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Speaker 1: Thanks for your time. I mean, I presume these proposed

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Speaker 1: tariffs are to help the steel industry. Why do you

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Speaker 1: believe it would harm your industry?

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Speaker 2: Yes, sir Stephen, thanks for that question. You know, in general,

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Speaker 2: as the institute, we are very supportive of all measures

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Speaker 2: taken by a tech or DTIC to support local industrialization

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Speaker 2: in our industry. And so this is not necessarily a

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Speaker 2: commentary or press release. It was not a commentary on

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Speaker 2: the tariffs or the safeguard tariffs that were put in,

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Speaker 2: but rather to comment on maybe the timing, just to

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Speaker 2: give you some content. The market for our industry, which

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Speaker 2: is typically structural steel, is infrastructure mining things like that, bridges,

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Speaker 2: power plants, and of course, as you well know, ESCOM

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Speaker 2: has been releasing a number of new jobs on transmission

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Speaker 2: lines recently, and there's been some increased demand for rare

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Speaker 2: minerals precious metals in the region which we were blessed with,

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Speaker 2: and so our industry was looking forward to essentially a

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Speaker 2: year of getting busy. So we've sort of seen this

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Speaker 2: coming and one of the things we've been doing over

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Speaker 2: the past two years is preparing for what arsenmer Metal

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Speaker 2: has been telling us, which is the closure of one

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Speaker 2: of their plants on long products, and part of that,

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Speaker 2: of course involves getting all the service centers and merchants

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Speaker 2: to essentially find ways to make sure that there's no

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Speaker 2: shortage of steel to complete this product. So we don't

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Speaker 2: necessarily get involved with the prices on projects, but we

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Speaker 2: are very concerned with obviously quality and availability of steel.

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Speaker 2: That's sort of what where we live at the institute.

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Speaker 2: And so if you bring all these things together now

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Speaker 2: IACH has been investigating these anti damping tariffs and in

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Speaker 2: some cases safeguards for several months. These things take a

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Speaker 2: long time to put together, and what we're really commenting

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Speaker 2: on is the timing. So yes, we have all these jobs,

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Speaker 2: they're coming in. People have already gone and contracted. International

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Speaker 2: procurement officers have gone and bought in South Africa. Now

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Speaker 2: we need to have the steel available, and what had

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Speaker 2: happened when the stife came on, of course, is unfortunately

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Speaker 2: for us, it sent the wrong signal to a lot

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Speaker 2: of let's say, people who import steel, where they started

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Speaker 2: canceling their orders. Of the implications for yes, some of

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Speaker 2: our fabricators is obviously very difficult, and that's why we

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Speaker 2: had to send out this press release. It was just

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Speaker 2: the timing was somewhat difficult, and we're trying to see

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Speaker 2: if there's a way to solve this problem in the

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Speaker 2: near future.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so you would just want it to lay. I

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Speaker 1: suppose the obvious question I tech would ask you then

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Speaker 1: is for how long?

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Speaker 2: Okay. So what we're looking at is trying to satisfy

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Speaker 2: the immediate demand, which is the demand between now and

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Speaker 2: in six months from now, which is quite large, and

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Speaker 2: unfortunately many of the long product production units of the

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Speaker 2: middle are down and the one large let's call it minimal,

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Speaker 2: which is a wrong term. Let's call it the guys

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Speaker 2: who use recycled steel that is coming online locally has

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Speaker 2: not yet started making the larger sections, so they say

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Speaker 2: that they're going to get started in about six months

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Speaker 2: as well. So in a way, we're trying to see

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Speaker 2: how all the local manufacturers can get going before these

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Speaker 2: tariffs are implemented strictly. So, for instance, if there's a

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Speaker 2: shortage of materials, it might the case where our members

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Speaker 2: can easily get waivers to bring in the stuff from

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Speaker 2: abroad or get exceptions, a process that typically might take

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Speaker 2: some time, but if there could be a shorter way

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Speaker 2: of getting the exemptions, that would be useful. So we're

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Speaker 2: really looking at the very near future, which is indeed

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Speaker 2: why we thought this was a bit of an emergency,

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Speaker 2: because many projects are really facing a severe shortage of

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Speaker 2: materials at this moment.

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Speaker 1: Emaniel, thank you so much. Emmanuel Geberman SkELL is the

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Speaker 1: Sea of the Southern African Institute of Steel Construction,