5. Conclusions and future trends

The 20th century saw fantastic advances in hot rolling technology. What are the trends for the new century?

One of the key issues in today's steel industry is to achieve a good return on invested capital, whether this involves entirely new construction, acquisitions, with or without relocation, or the simple modernization of existing equipment. This is an increasingly difficult challenge, since on the one hand this industry, and especially the rolling mill part of it, requires a large amount of invested capital, and on the other, steel selling prices are falling year on year over the long term (we are considering long periods of more than 10 years here).

As explained in paragraph