Mr Prawit Horrungruang, a director of the Standard Long Steel Association, said that on 17 August there will be a public hearing on the new draft steel standard of the Thai Industrial Standards Institute, or TISI. He stressed that revising the standard is not about blocking operators, but about creating a single standard to raise the country's long-term competitiveness. He also pointed out that the key issue for induction furnace, or IF, smelting plants should not be which country the technology comes from, but the ability to control quality, product consistency, and safety, especially for steel used in building structures and infrastructure that affect people's lives. Mr Prawit also cited lessons from the steel crisis during the 1997 IMF period, saying Thailand should not let history repeat itself, and that raising the standard for IF steel is a major challenge for the Thai steel industry. A good standard, he said, must give the public confidence that every bar of steel leaving a factory comes from a reliable production and quality-control system, not just from a few samples that pass testing.
Article discusses a Thai steel standard hearing; impact on US HRC Steel is indirect and unclear.
