March Steel Imports Trending Toward 3.8 to 4.0 Million Tons

Below is a table where we compare March 2015 against November, December, January and February. March is, at the moment, following similar levels as seen in November and December and is below January and February daily license tonnage requests. We are seeing a big drop in semi-finished (which is understandable with the weakening domestic mill order books) but higher levels in galvanized and Galvalume (coated steels).

With March being a 22 day month we are not yet seeing a break in the trend which has been building since last summer (2014). At the moment we believe March imports will come in around the February level of 3.8 million tons or, about the 12 month moving average. However, if the license requests continue at the current rate the data suggests March could be another 4 million net ton import month. In the table below we continue to see big numbers on OCTG (oil country tubular goods) which is amazing considering that market has collapsed over the past few months.

Coiled plate imports have also jumped and at the moment the data is trending (or suggesting) we could see coiled plate above 300,000 net tons instead of the more “normal” low 200,000 ton level.

Cold rolled is trending lower while galvanized and Galvalume are moving higher (as mentioned above).

Steel Market Update will continue to probe these numbers further and next week when the new license data is released we will concentrate on who the culprit (countries) are responsible for the increasing coated numbers.

A note to our Premium level members: We have published the most recent Imports by Product, Port and Country data in our website.