steel being stolen in Japan

R

ryosuke

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Jun 27, 2006
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I read on the newspaper that recently there is alot steel being stolen from many places in Japan. Things like slides at the park that children play with and all the signs you see on roads and highways. even the plates that are used to cover the dithces on the side of the roads. almost anything made of steel are stolen. They say that probably this is happening because of the steep increase of price of steel due to the rapid economic development in China. Does this mean that knives will be more expensive too?
 
I would think that the steal in a knife probably only costs a few dollar, so even if that doubles the steal would only cost 6 dollars say. Most of the cost of a knife is in the name.
 
Steel really isn't that valuable. Scrap on plain steel or low quality (magnetic) stainless is about a penny a pound, or that's what it was when I traded in some scrap in January. If my scrap had been non-magnetic stainless, it could have been worth $1 or $1.50 per pound. Obviously, knife steel is probably a little more valuable, given that very specific alloys are being used. I bet a majority of the price is, as the previous poster stated, in the name and manufacturing processes associated with making a knife or tool.

FYI- we are having the same problem in this country:(
 
Actually the high end steels thay have alloys like Vanadium will get much more expensive and in some cases even imposible to get. It is not the steel so much as the expensive alloys as some of those are impossible tio do without in things like engines or bearings or machine tools.
 
The demand of China is causing the prices of all materials to rise. Look at titanium prices over the past few years, they have gone through the roof!
 
Steven Roos said:
The demand of China is causing the prices of all materials to rise. Look at titanium prices over the past few years, they have gone through the roof!
Click to expand...

Actually, China is a supplier of titanium. They have more reserves of ore than the US.

Titanium has gone up because of worldwide demand. Aircraft, munitions (the US Army's new howitzer has a lot of titanium in it.), et. al. As fuel prices rise, there is an increased impetus to reduce weight in all sorts of items. Aluminum is not strong enough to replace steel in most applications. Ti is.

One of the problems in the materials world today is that excess capacity to produce materials such as steel and titanium has been eliminated over the last 30 years as plants were closed to reduce operating costs for various companies. Now there is little excess capacity, so when demand increases, there is not enough material to cover it, so there go prices. And it takes years to bring a new production facitlity on line. This is a greatly simplified explanation, but it covers the basics.

Ryosuke, the cost of the steel in a knife is a fraction of the cost of the knife. Far more goes to production, marketing, and design costs. It costs way more to turn steel into a knife than to just buy the steel.
 
Along with lack of capacity, i.e., like refinery capacity for gasoline in the U.S., is the high taxes on carryover inventory each year. Great for just-in-time industries, sucky for slow turnover hardware ventures.

This affects demand at the retail level and causes the large fluctuations in pricing for building materials and "hot" knives, because it costs more to carry "excess" inventory. At least hurricanes don't effect the knives.
 
Great point about capacity guys. Investment in infastructure has been sacrificed
on the alter of 10% return on investment a year.
 
On the west coast (Surrey, BC) of Canada, thieves are stealing all the copper wires for the street lights because of the raising cost for recycle copper.
 
At least we know where the new Cold Steel knives are coming from.
J/K I like Cold Steel, just teasing.
 
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