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Messe Düsseldorf GmbH
E-shops, marketplaces, trading systems – The future of metal trading is digital
The fax and telephone era in the steel and metal trading busi- ness is coming to an end. The winners will be the traders who have been quick and purpose- ful in the digitisation of their processes. The development will lead to fully automatic steel supply via the Internet of things – with or without steel traders.
Some outdated practices have sur- vived in the steel community. The fax machine is one of them. While everyone nowadays has a smart- phone in his pocket and social media have been an accepted feature of everyday life for a long time now, modern communication in steel trading still revolves around landline phones and fax machines.
The times are changing, however. “Digitisation of steel trading has only reached the early stages of dynamic development”, says Dr Heinz-Jürgen Büchner. The Man- aging Director of IKB Deutsche Industriebank in Frankfurt sees customers as the driving force. “As in other trading segments, the trend towards digitisation is in the nal analysis likely to be driven by the customers here too.”
Many steel manufacturers are ahead of this. Offers to communi- cate with steel manufacturers dig- itally are already being accepted by many steel customers, as the industry expert made clear at an event organised by the steel trading association BDS. Büchner’s conclusion: “In the short or long term, it will therefore be necessary for steel traders to follow suit”.
At the European level, more
than one third of steel sales is transacted via direct sales from the steel mill to the customer. Large customers in the automo- tive industry in particular buy steel directly from the mill in the context of lengthy contracts. A further 37% is sold via steel service centres. These compa- nies, which specialise in services and machining, operate between classic material traders and man- ufacturing industries – frequently acting as the services division of steel traders, who lengthen their added value chain via machin- ing, i.e. rolling, sawing, drilling, welding, thread cutting, bending or nishing of steel and alu- minium. What the modest word “machining” involves extends as far as the production of complex components for the automotive, construction and machine manu- facturing industries.
“It is a striking fact that the per- centage of direct deliveries by steel manufacturers is substan-
Technical Papers
Messe Düsseldorf GmbH
Messeplatz 40474 Düsseldorf Gernany
Petra Hartmann-Bresgen
Tel.: +49 (0)211 4560 541 Fax: +49 (0)211 4560 87 541
HartmannP@ messe-duesseldorf.de www.messe-duesseldorf.com
ITAtube Journal No2/July 2018
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