Steel Products Prices North America

Comparison Price Indices: Modest Declines

Written by John Packard

March 8, 2015

The pace of the drop in flat rolled steel prices slowed this past week. From our perspective, we saw hot rolled prices as down $5 per ton, cold rolled and galvanized as flat and Galvalume up $5 per ton compared to the previous week.

All of the reporting steel indexes (SMU, CRU & Platts) followed by Steel Market Update saw single digit declines in benchmark hot rolled and our average dropped below $500 per ton to $496.50 (rounded to $497).

SteelBenchmarker did not report prices this past week as they only produce prices twice per month. Since they did not report, we are showing their numbers as NA as their previous numbers are not relevant to this past week’s data.

As the decline in price adjustments slows we are seeing the spreads between the three indexes being reported this week as tightening. We now have a $9.50 spread on hot rolled ($492.50 to $502), $5 spread on cold rolled ($625-$630) and $2 spread on galvanized.  There is an $11 per ton spread between CRU and Platts on plate.

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 The weeks where they do not produce numbers (NA = not available) we will not include their outdated numbers in the CPI average.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

Read more from John Packard

Latest in Steel Products Prices North America