John Merchant

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John Merchant

John Merchant

@_JohnMerchant

Computer friend

Whyalla, South Australia Katılım Aralık 2016
3.4K Takip Edilen803 Takipçiler
John Merchant
John Merchant@_JohnMerchant·
@jasontwebster @theoztrucker AUKUS will need niche alloys. Whyalla just got pre-war priced gas supply locked in for a decade while DRI-EAF mills everywhere else face closure from LPG crisis. They’ll probably use defence procurement budget to subsidise the upgrades.
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John Merchant
John Merchant@_JohnMerchant·
@grok @I_HODL_BTC @AlboMP Of course I am right. They didn’t even fix the traffic lights or stock toilet paper while billions was rolling in. All sent offshore.
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Grok
Grok@grok·
@I_HODL_BTC @_JohnMerchant @AlboMP Thumbs up. The claim is spot on: divert revenue from core asset maintenance (like keeping the blast furnace running) and it fails, profits vanish. Classic case of eating the seed corn instead of reinvesting.
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Anthony Albanese
Anthony Albanese@AlboMP·
We need to keep making things here in Australia. For local jobs. And for our security. Here in Whyalla, we stepped in to support thousands of jobs and keep making steel in Australia. A year on, steel made here is going into the roads and rail, hospital and schools Australia needs. Together with Premier Malinauskas, we’re backing workers and building South Australia’s future.
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Grok
Grok@grok·
@I_HODL_BTC @_JohnMerchant @AlboMP No, if Johnny boy's persistent claim is that government intervention failed to save Whyalla steelmaking, the evidence shows it succeeded: the $2.4B package stabilized operations, production hit records by late 2025, and new jobs continue to be added as of March 2026.
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John Merchant retweetledi
dan nolan
dan nolan@dannolan·
went into a bank... weirdly they had loads of money, nothing to worry about
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John Merchant
John Merchant@_JohnMerchant·
@gabs247 Prepare for some trumpet of patriots level revelations
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John Merchant
John Merchant@_JohnMerchant·
@I_HODL_BTC @grok @AlboMP If you send the revenue to Romania instead of spending it on maintaining the blast furnace, and then the blast furnace shuts down, it is obviously not going to turn a profit
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Grok
Grok@grok·
The Whyalla site under GFG posted $319M losses in 7 months (to Jan 2025), equating to $1.5M/day – no profits to send anywhere. Administrators cited chronic underinvestment: blast furnace shutdowns from neglected maintenance, just 3 days' coking coal stock, $1.34B total debts (incl. $569M owed to GFG entities), and even broken traffic lights at the plant entrance. GFG's global structure had intercompany flows and overseas scrutiny (incl. Romania ops), but local ops were starved, not stripped of surplus. That's why it hit admin.
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John Merchant
John Merchant@_JohnMerchant·
@I_HODL_BTC @grok @AlboMP It was failing because the last owner was sending the profits overseas to Romania instead of spending it on blast furnace repairs or even fixing the traffic lights @Grok
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Mike Ehrmantraut
Mike Ehrmantraut@I_HODL_BTC·
@grok @AlboMP Yeah, yeah in the real world, it would have failed without our tax dollars being used. Pathetic.
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John Merchant
John Merchant@_JohnMerchant·
@mdtlion @AlboMP If there was no intervention the blast furnace would have broken down and there goes Australian steelmaking forever
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mdtlion
mdtlion@mdtlion·
@AlboMP Thanks to Albo’s heroic intervention the steel mill is now only hemorrhaging money at a slightly slower rate. Truly the Fidel Castro of Whyalla.
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John Merchant
John Merchant@_JohnMerchant·
@DickyChap @AlboMP They will when it’s cheap enough. They have to use natural gas to process the iron ore for the electric arc furnace. When the market can supply green hydrogen it’ll be blended in with the gas.
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Dicky Chap
Dicky Chap@DickyChap·
@AlboMP Using genuinely Green H2 in place of coal I hope.
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John Merchant retweetledi
John Merchant retweetledi
theunaustralian.net
theunaustralian.net@TheUnOz·
BREAKING: Gina Rinehart assures South Australian voters that Pauline Hanson is the best politician that money can buy. #auspol #sapol
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John Merchant
John Merchant@_JohnMerchant·
If our truckers refuse to go EV, I’ll do it for free.
Sawyer Merritt@SawyerMerritt

WSJ: Tesla Finally Has Its First Semi-Truck and It’s Already a Hit With Truckers. "Truckers who drove it in pilot tests say they loved features including a centered driving position, faster charging and longer range for about $100,000 less than other battery-electric trucks. Angel Rodriguez, a 56-year-old truck driver for Hight Logistics in Long Beach, Calif., recently swapped out a 13-gear diesel truck for a Tesla Semi, which is automatic, for a one-month pilot test. “It’s just easier on your body. It’s less stressful because you’re not really having to engage the clutch and the stick shift.” Big F Transport employs five mechanics to service more than 40 diesel-powered rigs and a fleet of trailer chassis in Wilmington, Calif. “If we go all EV we will only need one [mechanic] to service chassis,” said Geovanny Melendez, the carrier’s VP of operations, who went to see the Semi earlier this month at a ride-and-drive event near the Port of Long Beach. Jennie Abarca, co-founder and CEO of King Fio Trucking in Long Beach, Calif., once worked as a truck dispatcher and her husband is a truck driver, so she knows all too well the toll a diesel engine takes on people’s lungs and hearing. She eventually wants to swap out King Fio’s 27 diesel trucks to create an all-electric fleet. King Fio already has 11 battery-electric trucks from Volvo and Nikola. But the company limits those trucks to shorter trips to and from local ports because they only have a range of about 225 miles. The Semi, by contrast, can travel 500 miles on a single charge, according to Tesla. For King Fio that means two or three round-trips a day from Long Beach to warehouses in the nearby Inland Empire or a single round-trip to Las Vegas. She has 20 Semis on order. “The Teslas change everything,” Abarca said. “It opens up a whole different type of delivery that I can make.”

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John Merchant
John Merchant@_JohnMerchant·
@phoozle My current theory is that BlueScope & Friends have panic bought Whyalla to lock in that decade of gas supply at pre-war prices
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Matthew Croall
Matthew Croall@phoozle·
Big news coming out of Whyalla today?
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