On Taranto see P.E.P. Regional Development in the E.E.C1962, p. 30. Nearer home the agitation over the Scottish strip mill is a good example. The Scottish T.U.C. claimed 'To site a fourth strip mill in Wales would be tantamount to a flagrant disregard of the relationship of steel production to industrial development.' Iron and Coal Trades Review, 21st February 1958, p. 424.
2.
There are useful surveys of steel pricing systems in Iron and Steel Board Annual Report 1964, 1965, pp. 24-28 and Appendix III, and Annual Report 1965, 1966, Appendix I. A comprehensive review of different systems is P.E.P. Steel Pricing Policies. Planning, December 1964. F.o.b. means 'free on board', the price, loaded ready for transport, at the producer's works.
3.
There were complaints from customers distant from steel works when the British steel industry applied for admission to E.C.S.C. at the time of the Common Market negotiations in 1962. The Iron and Steel Board made a study of the effects of a basing point system in Britain and showed that for most consumers inclusion of actual transport costs would have altered the delivered price by no more than plus or minus one per cent. At first sight negligible, this one per cent represents on most classes of steel 8/- to io/- a ton and the change to the E.C.S.C. system would generally have increased prices in the boom areas, and cut them in the fringe areas. T.R. Craig, 'Time for Changes in the Nature of Pricing.' Financial Times Supplement 'Britain's Steel Industry', 20th May 1963. Iron and Steel Board Annual Report, 1962, p. 24.
4.
5.
Iron and Steel Board.Price Determination 1962. No. 1. Related Schedule No. 16. Rolled and Rerolled steel bars and sections .
6.
' Results of Consumers Census 1965. The consumption recorded regionally for all categories of steel was 74.23 per cent of total home consumption.
7.
I am indebted to Hoover Ltd. for information about their operations.
8.
B.I.S.F. and John Summers.
9.
Age hardening occurs in sheet steel. Deep pressing operations are, therefore, easier with recently rolled than with warehoused sheet. For so-called 'stabilised' sheet, in which age hardening is prevented, the consumer must pay an extra of £3 a ton.
