Just bonkers
- Thread starter ubuysa
- Start date
TonyCarter
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Partly due to the onerous (or not) regulations we have in the UK vs the lax (or not) regulations China and other countries have.
When I worked at British Steel (before it was Corus, Tata, etc.) we could buy & ship steel from Turkey and China, then re-process it to the correct quality (as invariably the grade claimed was not what you got) and it would be cheaper than we could buy the raw materials.
The only valuable steel-making was the specialist / electrical steels (i.e. £10k/tonne vs £500/tonne for standard stuff) we were still making and exporting that stuff when I left.
When I worked at British Steel (before it was Corus, Tata, etc.) we could buy & ship steel from Turkey and China, then re-process it to the correct quality (as invariably the grade claimed was not what you got) and it would be cheaper than we could buy the raw materials.
The only valuable steel-making was the specialist / electrical steels (i.e. £10k/tonne vs £500/tonne for standard stuff) we were still making and exporting that stuff when I left.
ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
When I lived aboard my yacht in the marina here I used to run the weekly Sunday BBQ. We bough charcoal locally in big 50kg bags. On the outside it' said "Made in Argentina". How can it be cheaper to ship burnt wood across the Atlantic than to just burn wood here?
I later found out that they have specialised charcoal ships. Wood is loaded in Argentina and it's burned into charcoal on the ship as it comes across. It's a mad world.
I later found out that they have specialised charcoal ships. Wood is loaded in Argentina and it's burned into charcoal on the ship as it comes across. It's a mad world.
TonyCarter
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
All this supply chain and procurement analysis is part of my current day job, so have to sift through hundreds of pages of commodity reports/forecasts/outlooks/blue papers/etc. to get to the key points (our AI tool is useless for this currently). This informs our budget, plan and hedging/forward buying strategies.
But I've been told that there's no budget to renew my contract next year (and I'm on holiday from Friday), so I'm having fun telling the rest of the team that they're going to have to do this themselves from now on...and despite spending the last week writing handover guides for each task and offering to schedule time in their diaries to had it over they're all panicking as what takes me about 1 hour per commodity to do (plus compiling the reports for the c-suite), has been taking them 4 hours per (and there's 5 per person, per month to do) and no-one has volunteered for the c-suite reports.
In May this year told them to hedge our total 2025 volumes when we were offered it at $2400/tonne...but they wanted to wait for it to get down to their target of $2200. It's now $2600/tonne and expected to go upto as much as $2800 next year - so that's a £1m saving down the drain.
I'm really looking forward to my holiday, and not having to come back to a month's worth of catching up
But I've been told that there's no budget to renew my contract next year (and I'm on holiday from Friday), so I'm having fun telling the rest of the team that they're going to have to do this themselves from now on...and despite spending the last week writing handover guides for each task and offering to schedule time in their diaries to had it over they're all panicking as what takes me about 1 hour per commodity to do (plus compiling the reports for the c-suite), has been taking them 4 hours per (and there's 5 per person, per month to do) and no-one has volunteered for the c-suite reports.
In May this year told them to hedge our total 2025 volumes when we were offered it at $2400/tonne...but they wanted to wait for it to get down to their target of $2200. It's now $2600/tonne and expected to go upto as much as $2800 next year - so that's a £1m saving down the drain.
I'm really looking forward to my holiday, and not having to come back to a month's worth of catching up
Depends on the size of the ship and how you fillet.