Steel Products Prices North America

ArcelorMittal Announces Price Increase- USS, NLMK, Severstal Follow

April 2, 2014

In an email sent late in the afternoon on Monday, March 17th, ArcelorMittal USA announced a price increase on all of their new flat rolled orders, with specific base prices at $33.00 for hot rolled, $39.50 for cold rolled, and $39.50 for galvanized. The mill justified their increase by stating “Despite the recent drop in scrap prices, energy and transportation costs have skyrocketed and offset any cost benefit in our operations that may be incorrectly perceived.”

The next day, two other steel mills followed the lead of ArcelorMittal by raising their prices, NLMK USA and US Steel. The new base prices out of NLMK were the same as those from ArcelorMittal, while the US Steel announcement stated a $40 per ton increase on spot orders rather than stating a firm base price. By the end of the week essentially all of the domestic mills had either followed AM lead or chose to use the USS approach with a $40 per ton price increase announcement.

Later in the day, Severstal followed suit and followed ArcelorMittal and NLMK, announcing new base prices at the same level as the other mills. Highlights from their announcement include “The winter has been a difficult one for all of us… Steel production and shipments have been reduced and delayed across the industry, especially in the Midwest. Further complicating the picture, we have faced dramatically higher energy costs due to increased consumer needs for heating” and “Steel production is healthy, but as a result scrap cost is also looking to move up over the next few months.”

We are watching the AK Steel website as they tend to publish their price increases (normally they post increases after 4 PM).

We understand that Nucor has sales meetings scheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday) and expect they will follow with some form of announcement.

SDI does not announce their changes in prices in writing to their customers.

A $40 per ton price increase, based on SMU indices from today, would take hot rolled to $660 per ton, cold rolled to $780 per ton, galvanized base to $765 per ton and Galvalume base to $775 per ton.

Brett Linton

Brett Linton is a senior analyst for Steel Market Update, where he began his career. Linton has been in the steel industry since 2010. He has held roles as a category manager and strategic insights director at Reibus before returning to SMU in 2024. He is a graduate of The University of North Georgia with a degree in Finance and Accounting. Brett can be reached at brett@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-314-0179.