Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
March 1, 2017
I did a whirlwind trip to Philadelphia along with John Eckstein, one of our Steel 101 instructors, for a speaking engagement with a manufacturing company in the area. We provided a hybrid Steel 101/Steel Market Update presentation to a small group of executives. More and more this is something I am being asked to do and I am receptive to these kinds of speaking engagements as long as they can fit into my calendar. If you have interest in booking myself or members of our team please contact me at: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
Two more mills announced new coating extras for galvanized steel. Steel Dynamics (SDI) brought out new prices yesterday and NMLK USA came out with new extras today. We will work on getting all of the new extras and will provide an analysis sometime next week.
Our next flat rolled steel market trends analysis will begin on Monday morning. If you receive an invitation please click on the button contained in the invitation which will take you to our questionnaire hosted by SurveyMonkey.com.
Again, a note about our April Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop is sold out and has a waiting list. We are in negotiations with a couple of mills regarding our next workshop which we anticipate being in late June into mid-July. We are also working on hosting another one in the late September/early October time frame. If you would like information stay tuned to our website or feel free to send us an email at info@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
I want to welcome a few companies who will be sponsoring and/or exhibiting their wares at our 7th SMU Steel Summit Conference at the end of August (28th-30th). Red Bud Industries will be joining us for the first time as a sponsor as will Majestic Steel. The Georgia Ports Authority will be returning as an exhibitor for the second year in a row. We thank you very much for your support of our conference – don’t forget to tell your customers, suppliers and steel friends where you will be at the end of August…
Details about the SMU Steel Summit Conference can be found on our website. We have a large number of speakers committed and we should be loading them onto our website for you to review (I spoke with Brett and he promised to have them up on the website by Friday afternoon).
Registration is open and we encourage those going to make hotel reservations early as we were not able to block enough rooms to accommodate everyone at the $139 special rate at the Atlanta Airport Marriott Gateway hotel which is the HQ for the conference.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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Final Thoughts
One of the perhaps unintentional perks of being a trade journalist is the opportunity to travel and cover an array of industry conferences and events. Some I've attended have been at fun locations, like Palm Springs and Tampa, Fla. Others have been in more practical locations, like SMU’s Steel Summit in Atlanta and American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) meetings in Washington, D.C.
Final Thoughts
t this point in the game I think what we can say about Nippon Steel’s proposed buy of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel is that it will go through, it won’t go through, or the outcome will be something new and completely unexpected. Then again, I’m probably still missing a few options.
Final Thoughts
President-elect Donald Trump continues to send shockwaves through the political establishment (again). And steel markets and ferrous scrap markets continue to be, well, anything but shocking. As the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." (I thought the quote might have been Yankees catcher Yogi Berra in 1949. Google taught me something new today.)