Steel Products

Bits and Pieces

August 9, 2013

Every so often it is interesting to just review the comments made to Steel Market Update (SMU) during our steel market survey. Occasionally we can catch a raw gem. In the comment below a large Midwest based service center discusses their service center spot business (supplying steel from one service center to another):

“Lean inventories are keeping the spot market very active. Big buyers continue to sit back and buy much smaller tons from their mills because (1) they do not want to pay the new mill number, and (2) there are still some opportunities, though limited, to buy from the service centers in the spot market. The next move is to see what happens first: either the mills lower pricing in effort to stimulate order books or the SC spot market dries up providing further strength to the domestic mills.”

I found this individual’s comments about something having to give as being very interesting – either mills lower prices or the service center spot market dries up…

In July, AHMSA set new records for liquid steel production at Monclova and for pig iron production at Alto Homo. Steel plate output for the July was 373,000 tons compared to the previous record of 355,000 tons in December 2011. Heavy section production also set a record at 20,300 tonnes. Increased production followed the completion last month of the $2.3 billion Phoenix Project that boosted AHMSA annual production capacity to 5 million tonnes.