Steel Products Prices North America

Comparison Price Indices: The Week the Stars Aligned

Written by John Packard

February 22, 2015

For the first time in many weeks, Steel Market Update, Platts and CRU hot rolled price indices are almost the same. SMU and Platts see HRC prices as averaging $515 per ton while CRU is two dollars higher at $517 per ton.

Cold rolled prices did not meet the same fate as Platts sees CRC averaging $670 per ton while SMU at $640 and CRU at $649 are $30 and $21 per ton lower than Platts.

The galvanized spread also shrank as CRU was down $28 per ton to $727 per ton while SMU remained the same as last week at $714 per ton (.060” G90 with $69 worth of coating extras).

The Galvalume index as reported by SMU remained the same as last week at $946 per ton (.0142” AZ50 Grade 80).

The spread on plate increased this week when CRU dropped their plate average by $18 per ton and Platts remained the same.

We did not include SteelBenchmarker data this week as they did not produce new numbers as they only produce their indices twice per month.

FOB Points for each index:

SMU: Domestic Mill, East of the Rockies.
CRU: Midwest Mill, East of the Rockies.
SteelBenchmarker: Domestic Mill, East of the Mississippi.
Platts: Northern Indiana Domestic Mill.

Note that SteelBenchmarker produces numbers twice per month. On the weeks they produce numbers we will include them in the average. The weeks where they do not produce numbers (NA = not available) we will not include their outdated numbers in the CPI average.

John Packard

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