also what are the factors of location of these steel plants
A lot of iron ore is available in the upper great lakes region. Iron ore needs to be transported on large freighters, and the Great lakes served a purpose for that transit system as well. I cant say much about Birmingham, but as for Detroit and Pittsburgh, the steel forming industry has been greatly affected by the low cost Asian imports now available. I think what happened was this: The US used to subsidize the US steel industry, this kept prices artificially high ( compared to the world market ), but also kept the plants open. Sometime during the present Bush administration, the US stopped subsidizing the steel industry, and the Asian steel manufacturers started dumping steel here in the US at very low prices, this caused the US company's to stop or greatly lower their production, and many US steel plants went out of business. Now with the US steel companies out of the way, the Asian steel companies have steadily raised their prices on the US steel buyer. Hows that for fair trade, the steel industry isn't the only thing this has happened to either. I know this was a bit of a rant, but I wanted to point out how a once proud steel industry was put to death by politics.
iron ore comes from mines in North America, but also abroad. I think the majority of ore comes from mines in Michigan, Minnesota, and Canada. reason that steel plants are near great lakes is because the car industry is there... they are the major consumer of steel...
I work for a pipe manufacturer in Birmingham, AL. We have multiple divisions including two specialized steel pipe divisions and a ductile iron pipe divisions. As far as the steel pipe divisions, they purchase skelp from suppliers. All of the steel that they purchase is of domestic manufacture, and is very expensive. As for the ductile iron division, we manufacture our own iron for the pipe. To get the iron that we need, we buy scrap in the form of cars, refrigerators, rejected pipe that we produce, etc. It is shredded in one part of the plant, and then melted and cast as a new product. This has become very problematic, scrap prices have skyrocketed in the US due to the large demand from countries such as China who gobble all of the material because they need great quantities of it. So, to answer your question, we get steel from recycling and then some raw iron ore. As to where we get the raw ore, I'm not 100% sure.
