Steel Products Prices North America
Steel Mills Pulling Offers & Raising Steel Prices
Written by John Packard
April 6, 2014
Steel Market Update began this week with an article on Sunday evening titled, “This Could Be a Tumultuous Week.” Looking back over the past five days that title was an understatement. This week has been tumultuous times ten.
Why? U.S. Steel can’t seem to catch a break. They now have steelmaking operations temporarily suspended at two plants: Great Lakes and Gary. Combined, they are losing approximately 30-35,000 tons of steel making capacity each and every day that they are down. US Steel pulled their open offers off the table on Friday.
US Steel’s loss is someone else’s gain and the other domestic mills are reacting as offers have been suspended and new flat rolled steel prices are being announced.
The Nucor Sheet Mill Group came out with a price announcement this morning (Friday, April 04, 2014) taking base prices from the $33.00/cwt ($660 per ton) minimum up to $34.25/cwt ($685 per ton) on benchmark hot rolled coil. This equates to a $25 per ton price increase. Cold rolled and coated also rose by a like amount with the new minimum being asked at $40.75/cwt ($815 per ton) plus extras.
NLMK USA responded this afternoon by announcing that they are taking prices up $30 per ton and we have learned that other mills have pulled their open quotes and are mulling over where prices need to go from here.
One mill commercial officer told SMU they were already asking for the new numbers even though they had not yet made a price announcement.
A conversion mill told SMU this morning that they needed to see base prices on coated over $40.00/cwt just to break even on their new substrate costs.
Adding fuel to the fire, we are seeing ferrous scrap prices rising this week as the domestic steel mills conclude their negotiations with their scrap suppliers. We are seeing scrap prices rise by as much as $30 per gross ton in the Ohio Valley to as little as $10 per gross ton in Detroit. The bottom line for the steel mills is their cost for scrap just went up.
Add to this lead times which are extending (as we reported in an article in Thursday evening’s edition of SMU) and buyers need to be vigilant, keeping a close eye on your suppliers, shipments and lead times. Prices, we can only assume, will continue to rise from here based on supply issues.
If demand kicks in at ever higher levels – well, we could be in for a long, hot summer…
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Steel Products Prices North America
SMU Community Chat: Timna Tanners on ‘Trumplications’ for steel in 2025
Wolfe Research's Managing Director Timna Tanners discusses the 'Trumplications' for steel in the coming year in this week's SMU Community Chat.
Nucor raises hot rolled spot price to $750/ton
Nucor raised its weekly consumer spot price (CSP) for HRC this week to $750/short ton.
SMU price ranges: Most sheet and plate products drift lower
Steel sheet prices mostly edged lower for a second week, while plate prices slipped for the third consecutive week.
Nucor drops HRC price to $720/ton
After holding its weekly spot price for hot-rolled (HR) coil steady for three weeks at $730 per short ton (st), Nucor lowered the price this week by $10/st.
SMU price ranges: Sheet slips, plate falls to 45-month low
Steel sheet and plate prices moved lower this week as efforts among some mills to hold the line on tags ran up against continued concerns about demand.