It’s quite usual at the annual meeting of any industry association for there to be asides, badinage and rumour-mongering. Some would say that’s the stuff on which journalists thrive, and maybe they wouldn’t be wrong.

But at this year’s meeting of the EPMA in Istanbul it was difficult to avoid the hardly concealed and bitter complaints by component manufacturers that powder price rises were hurting them badly.

Executives from the powder manufacturers, by comparison, were unapologetically robust in their defence of what they see as perfectly justified and over-delayed increases that still do not reflect the true price of scrap steel and its alloying additions such as molybdenum and nickel.

One said: “What these guys have to realise is that our surcharges lag the raw materials increases and we can’t pass them on in full. They have to look at some alternatives: there are alloying materials such as manganese and chrome which are both useful and available at low cost compared to the likes of nickel. It may be that they are not so easy to use, but that’s a question of skill as much as anything. They are certainly very useful in many, many applications.”

Swedish powder maker Höganäs, which revealed excellent First Quarter figures just before the Istanbul gathering, was more or less cast as “villain of the piece” for this year’s production of Spot the Bad Guy, though other powder manufacturers have starred in previous productions seen in recent years. This year they could sit on their hands, but there was certainly no hint that they would do anything other than follow the upward price trend.

The powder makers have a point, of course. The price of scrap steel is way up as the Chinese boom sucks in more and more. Nickel, used in the manufacture of stainless steels is in a sustained boom, driven by burgeoning demand (mainly from China) and tight raw material supplies. Last year’s Gadarene rush to acquire market share in nickel saw the sale of Inco to Brazilian steelmaker CVRD and the sale of its intended takeover target, Falconbridge, to European interests, but the merger and acquisition activity does not seem to have eased the supply choke.
So what of the component manufacturers? As ever, the automotive industry is the big customer, and as ever, they drive hard bargains. But during a discussion of the state of the European industry there came a dramatic interjection from Cèsar Molins, outgoing EPMA president and chairman of Spanish PM parts maker Ames. He alleged that “immoral and unethical behaviour” was among the pressures responsible from bringing some PM part makers to the brink of bankruptcy.

Later he detailed to Metal Powder Report the behaviour that he ascribed to a major European automotive consumer of PM products.

Forgery: “I believe in maintaining good relations within the industry, although we naturally compete hard for contracts. That’s fair. So it came as something of a shock when I was approached by a competitor and abused for undercutting him on the price of one particular part to the extent that the price quoted would have resulted in a loss.
“The problem was that we had not quoted for the part. He swore that he had been shown a fax of such a quote with the appropriate heading and signature. I was left to conclude that the convenience of modern copying facilities is as easy to abuse as it is to use.”
Blackmail: “I was approached and asked to quote a very low target price for a part. When I pointed out that it would be a loss maker, the buyer said that the quote wasn’t for real, but would be used to force a competitor’s price down. I refused, at which point I was told that unless I did quote, other work would be removed. I had no choice, I still refused, and as it turned out nothing happened.

“This sort of behaviour has no place in business and is way outside any ethical code. It is one thing to engage in fair competition, but quite another to have to face underhanded tricks.