Final Thoughts

I am hearing things appear to be tightening up again – especially in the North but not exclusively in the North. We heard from one service center earlier this evening that who told us that US Steel lead times have been steadily moving out one week – every week. His opinion was their order book appears to be at “equilibrium” with hot rolled lead times at 3 weeks in the South to 6 weeks at Gary Works.

During the Nucor conference call it was interesting to listen to John Ferriola speak about the major consolidation that has happened within the flat rolled steel industry over the past two years. We tend to forget about the demise of RG Steel and the three steel mills associated with their bankruptcy (Sparrows Point, Wheeling and Warren). Last year we had ArcelorMittal & Nippon Sumitomo purchase the ThyssenKrupp Calvert, Alabama mill and now we have AK Steel and Steel Dynamics rolling up the Severstal North American operations which include Dearborn and Columbus. In each case, a non-traditional or foreign owned mill either disappeared or became part of an existing operating mill within the United States. If you think about it there will have been approximately 18-19 million tons of capacity either shuttered or changing hands with maybe one more mill joining that list before the end of the year.

To put that into perspective, the AISI announced earlier this week that total domestic steel production for 2013 was 96 million tons.

Our friends at Armada Corporate Intelligence (Dr. Chris Kuehl being one of our keynote speakers at our conference) pointed out in their Thursday evening newsletter, GDP is estimated by the IMF, Fed and others for 3rd and 4th Quarter between 3-3.5 percent for each quarter. This would mean growth within the steel industry and we are picking that growth in demand within our surveys as well.

As always we thank you for your continued business which is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.

John Packard, Publisher

Still hoping to see you – or your industry friends – here in Atlanta in early September…