Steel Products Prices North America

Comparison Price Indices: Tightening Spreads

Written by John Packard

September 8, 2015

Due to the Labor Day Holiday in the United States, Steel Market Update did not produce our Comparison Price Indices article on Sunday evening. Since many of our readers look forward to this information we are publishing last week’s numbers this evening.

Hot rolled coil was dropped below $450 per ton on two indexes – SMU at $440 per ton ($22.00/cwt) and CRU at $449 per ton. Platts, which had been stuck on $465 per ton for quite some time is now at $445 and holding (no change last week). When looking at all of the indexes that reported last week our HRC average is down $5 per ton to $448 per ton.

Cold rolled is much tighter as all of the indexes are within $5 per ton. SMU and Platts are both at $575 per ton and CRU is at $580 per ton.

Galvanized dropped on both SMU (down $10) and CRU (down $3) although there is a spread of $15 per ton between the two indexes.

SMU saw Galvalume as being up $3 per ton last week.

The spread between CRU and Platts on plate products narrowed as CRU dropped their plate price average by $8 per ton.

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 The weeks where they do not produce numbers (NA = not available) we will not include their outdated numbers in the CPI average.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