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2 September 2016   |   Announcements

New Zealand Steel Industry Fact Sheet

New Zealand Steel Industry Overview 

Metals New Zealand estimates the total New Zealand market demand for carbon steel is approximately 850,000 tonnes per annum (2016) with a 50:50 tonnage split of domestic manufacture and steel products sourced internationally. New Zealand’s domestic steel making operation is configured for flat products, wire and reinforcing bar manufacture. There is no steel mill production in New Zealand of products such as hot rolled structural sections, large diameter structural pipes, sheet piling, reinforcing strand or special flat products. These are imported and have been for many years. Nevertheless, there have been extremely low failure rates on delivering imported products to customer specification, as reported to Metals New Zealand in the past few years.

Steel Distribution – Committed to Quality
  • For more than 90 years Fletcher Building’s Steel distribution businesses have supplied a range of merchant, structural and reinforcing products, under the Fletcher Reinforcing and Easysteel brands, designed to comply with the relevant standards and our customers’ requirements.
  • Steel Distribution’s Fletcher Reinforcing business is currently working to achieve third party product certification for its processed reinforcing steelproducts. Third party certification goes beyond product quality assurance and includes documentation, traceability and other business processes.
  • 100% of the steel feed material used in reinforcing mesh manufactured by Fletcher Reinforcing comes from New Zealand’s Pacific Steel mill which is ACRS (Australasian Certification Authority for Reinforcing and Structural Steels) accredited.
  • Fletcher Steel Distribution sources the majority of its steel from New Zealand and Australian steel makers, however steel is a global commodity and many specialist steel products are not manufactured in Australasia. Consequently, Steel Distribution also sources steel from a variety of regions including Asia, South Africa, North America and Europe.
  • Steel supplied by Steel Distribution has a multi-phase procurement and quality assurance process that includes: evaluating the supplier and their supply history, document verification including mill accreditation and test certificate compliance, and independent product testing undertaken by an ILAC (International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation) accredited laboratory.
  • The procurement process is managed by a team of specialists who are committed to continuous review and improvement to quality assurance systems.
  • As part of Steel Distribution’s ongoing quality assurance process suppliers undergo a periodic recheck of accreditation status, test certificate compliance and product conformity to standards through independent testing.
Fletcher Construction – 107 years of Experience 

Construction has robust quality assurance processes developed over the past 107 years of building some of New Zealand’s most iconic buildings and structures. The engineering decisions made during a construction project are subject to peer review and independent inspection. For steel products there are comprehensive processes in place to ensure quality assurance through all stages of a project from specification, testing to standard, fabrication and installation.

ENDS

For further information contact:


Media:
Shannon Huse Caldwell
External Communications Manager

Phone: +64 9 525 9085
Mobile: +64 27 807 2933
Email: shannon.husecaldwell@fbu.com

Fletcher Building is an integrated manufacturer and distributor of infrastructure and building products, and a construction company. From the smallest grain of sand to projects of great scale, we make, deliver and build to improve infrastructure, build communities and strengthen economies. We have 19,000 people working in 25 business groups in 45 countries. For more visit www.fbu.com