Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

Written by John Packard


Some quick final thoughts this evening – I will be traveling tomorrow (Monday) to Chicago to attend FABTECH and to teach a mini-version of our Steel 101 workshop (they call it Steel 101: Mill to Fabricator) on Tuesday afternoon. John Eckstein and I will be in Room 502B in McCormick Place, and the workshop is from 1:30 until 3:30 PM. The workshop is free to those registered to attend FABTECH.

Tim Triplett will be at FABTECH on Monday, so if you see him wandering the halls, take a moment to say hello.

If you are going to be at FABTECH on Tuesday and would like to spend a moment chatting with me, the best thing to do is to send me either a text (770-596-6268) or an email John@SteelMarketUpdate.com to see what my schedule looks like.

We should have our final dates set for our next Steel 101 workshop, which will be held in the Chicago area as we are touring the NLMK Portage, Ind., facility as part of the workshop. The workshop will be in March of next year.

Another quick reminder to put our 2018 SMU Steel Summit Conference on your calendars and company budgets. The conference will be held on Aug. 27, 28 and 29 at the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC) where we have been for the past four years.

As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.

John Packard, Publisher

Latest in Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

We never eat chicken on New Year’s Day. My Irish-Catholic grandmother thought it was bad luck – because chickens scratch backward. And one should start the year looking forward. But it’s hard to avoid the fact that we’re carrying a lot 2024 issues (and even 2023 ones) forward into 2025. That’s not all bad. We’re starting 2025 with SMU’s hot-rolled coil price at $675/per short ton (st). That’s $370/st lower than $1045/st at the outset of 2023, according to our interactive pricing tool. I think we can safely say that a decline of that magnitude won’t happen in 2025.