Steel Products Prices North America

Analysis of Sheet Steel Imports by District of Entry

Written by Peter Wright

November 13, 2016

We believe that misinformation (or lack of) about regional foreign steel import volumes is often used to influence purchase decisions. Our intent with this analysis of tonnage by district of entry is to describe in detail what is going on in a company’s immediate neighborhood and, thus, provide a negotiating advantage for our premium subscribers.

We are now publishing monthly data in the Imports/Exports section of our website that breaks down the tonnage of the four major sheet products (hot rolled, cold rolled, hot dipped galvanized, and other metallic coated) into the port of entry and country of origin in metric tons. This data set is large, therefore we will make no attempt to provide a commentary. Each readers interest will be different and he/she simply needs to select one of the four products then find the nearest port or ports of entry to see how much came into their region each month and where from. It is clear from these detailed reports that the growth of tonnage entering a particular district in many cases is completely different to the change in volume at the national level.

The table included here (click to enlarge) is a small extract from the data sheet for cold rolled coil. It describes the tonnage that has come in through Laredo, Los Angeles and Miami and the grand total for all districts of entry. It shows where it came from, the YTD tonnage and the YTD change compared to 2015. The grand total volume of CRC through September was down by 20.2 percent but Laredo was up by 52.3 percent. HRC into Houston in the 9 months through September was, down by 56 percent and into New Orleans was down by 81 percent from YTD September in 2015. The data on our web site spells this out with tonnage by source country for every port of entry around the country for hot rolled, cold rolled, hot dipped galvanized, and other metallic coated (which is mainly Galvalume).

The differences between regions and the discrepancy between each region and the national total is why we think it important for both market understanding and negotiating position to know what is going on in your own back yard.

The chart shows graphically the tonnage of CRC that entered the top 10 districts in YTD September for 2015 and 2016 and is ranked by 2016 tonnage. These 10 districts account for 92.9 percent of the grand total. Laredo has received the most tonnage this year and is ahead of New Orleans and Los Angeles which were the top two districts of entry last year.

The data in these detailed reports is compiled from tariff and trade data from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission. Our other import reports are sourced from U.S. Department of Commerce, Enforcement and Compliance, otherwise known as the Steel Import Monitoring System. In the development of these reports by district and source country we have discovered that the SIMA data for HRC and CRC contains some high alloy steel such as stainless and tool steel which have been misclassified at the ports. These alloy steels are not included in in our detailed reports which results in a discrepancy between the two data sets for CRC in particular and for HRC to a lesser degree.

Peter Wright

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