Steel Products Prices North America
ArcelorMittal USA, NLMK USA, Nucor & Stelco Announce Flat Rolled Price Increases
Written by John Packard
January 10, 2017
On Friday of this past week AK Steel announced a $40 per ton ($2.00/cwt) spot base price increase on all the flat rolled products they produce: hot rolled, cold rolled and galvanized steels.
On Monday morning, NLMK USA followed with the same $40 per ton announcement. We learned NLMK lead times are in February on hot rolled but fully processed cold rolled and hot dipped galvanized are already into March lead times.
Since then the flat rolled steel price announcements have been handled slightly differently by the mills that made public (or semi-public) announcements.
Around 9:30 AM Tuesday morning Nucor put out their announcement to their customer base calling for a $40 per ton increase on hot rolled but only $30 per ton on cold rolled and galvanized products. Nucor Berkeley reported hot rolled lead times as being in February with cold rolled and galvanized being late in February with some items slipping into the first week of March.
On Tuesday afternoon, ArcelorMittal USA announced to their customers of their intention to charge a minimum base price of $32.00/cwt ($640 per ton) on hot rolled, $42.50/cwt ($850 per ton) base on cold rolled and $42.50/cwt ($850 per ton) base on coated steels. Each base is before extras which need to be added in order to get the final FOB mill transaction pricing. Customers advised that AM hot rolled lead times were mid-February as of late last week.
We also heard from steel buyers that Steel Dynamics had opened their February order books and we looking to collect $43.00/cwt base ($860 per ton) on cold rolled base substrate galvanized.
CSN (Terre Haute, IN) was also looking for $43.00/cwt base on heavier gauges and $42.00/cwt base on light gauge galvanized. Their lead times are in mid-February.
Ternium (USA) lead times are mid to late February and we understand they are trying to fill out the month at a minimum of $42.00/cwt base.
Out of Canada we saw a letter from Stelco (formerly US Steel Canada) advising their customers of their intention to raise spot prices by $50 per ton (Canadian dollars).
We have reaction to the increase announcements in another article in tonight’s newsletter.
John Packard
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