Steel Products Prices North America
December Steel Import Trend Analysis
Written by John Packard
December 17, 2015
Late Tuesday afternoon the U.S. Department of Commerce released updated import license data for December. Based on the data through the first 15 days of the month it appears December imports will be very similar to November. We remind our readers that license data this early in the month should be taken with a grain of salt and not literally. The final numbers can vary. What the license data does show is the trend and we found some interesting things in the numbers.
We are seeing a sharp drop in OCTG (oil country tubular goods) which was anticipated due to the weakness in the energy markets where OCTG is used.
At the moment, hot rolled is trending higher than each of the past four months with the exception of October. We noticed that is a large shipment expected from Australia which we anticipate is going to Steelscape in Washington.
Cold rolled is also beginning to trend above all four of the previous months with the biggest change being the number of tons coming from Vietnam.
The data below is based on license data released between the 12th and 18th days of each month, for that respective month (i.e. August figures are from data released August 12-18, 2015). Figures have been broken down into daily import levels for each product.
The table below shows the last three months of import data for all products along with the twelve and three month moving averages. SMU believes the 3 million ton trend for December is over-stated as we expect the final tally to be closer to the November total of 2.7 million net tons.
If you wish to explore this data in more detail, visit the Imports History page on the Steel Market Update website here. If you have any questions you may reach us at info@SteelMarketUpdate.com or at (800) 432 3475. If you would like to become a Steel Market Update subscriber you can do so by clicking here and if you would like to trial our newsletter/website you can do so by clicking here.
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Steel Products Prices North America
CRU: Q3 will be the lowest point in current sheet price cycle
CRU Principal Analyst Shankhadeep Mukherjee expects a restocking cycle for steel sheet products in most parts of the world due to either low inventories or seasonally stronger demand.
CRU: US rebar and wire rod prices rise alongside S232 increase
CRU Senior Steel Analyst Alexandra Anderson discusses current market and pricing dynamics for long steel products in the US.
SMU Price Ranges: Sheet and plate steady ahead of Independence Day
Sheet and plate prices were little changed in the shortened week ahead of Independence Day, according to SMU’s latest check of the market.
Nucor maintains plate prices, opens August order book
Nucor aims to keep plate prices flat again with the opening of its August order book.
Nucor CSP remains level at $900/ton
Nucor maintained its weekly list price for hot-rolled (HR) coil this week, following two consecutive increases.