The following article was released by ArcelorMittal this past week to the greater steel community. The article deals with the challenges that ArcelorMittal says are “eerily similar” to those seen in 1998 which resulted in the bankruptcy of several steel mills, including LTV and Bethlehem Steel. Steel Market Update has a separate article normally produced […]
This past week Steel Market Update publisher, John Packard, spoke to the financial community about the flat rolled steel industry. Most of the questions received during the Cowen & Company conference call were associated with demand for steel products. Since SMU just concluded our early April flat rolled steel market analysis (survey) late last week, […]
During my conference call with Cowen & Company and their customers last week I mentioned that I thought we could see a domestic mill price increase by the middle of May. My reasoning is inventories should begin to drop at the service center level and many of the end users want to tie up steel […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) has two Steel Buyers Sentiment Indices, current and future. We normally concentrate our initial comments on the current index, how buyers and sellers of steel feel about business conditions and their company’s ability to be successful in the current market. However, today and going forward, we will begin focusing on how […]
US Steel has revised their galvanized coating extras to those being used prior to October 1, 2014 when the last change was made. The new extras are lower than those used this past year. Here are the new extras being charged: The change in extras came as a surprise to some within the industry as […]
This week Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our early April flat rolled steel market survey. Based on the results of our inquiries we learned that domestic mill lead times continue to be quite short and well below the lead times seen one year ago. However, when looking at last year’s lead times, we must remember […]
According to our survey respondents not much has changed when it comes to how willing steel mills are to negotiate hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steel pricing. Lead times continue to remain short and order books weak. This has created a situation whereby steel mills have to be competitively priced in order to […]
We have an article in tonight’s Steel Market Update about a service center which installed a new piece of processing equipment. Earlier today we posted on our website blog an article about Olympic Steel naming Andrew Wolfort general manager of their Schaumburg plant. We are interested in keeping the industry informed of these kinds of […]
Prices eased off the hectic pace we have been watching and reporting on over the past few months. Benchmark hot rolled pricing remained the same as what we reported this past week at $460 per ton average. We are watching the lower end of the range carefully to see if the domestic mills will attempt […]
Our scrap sources are advising Steel Market Update that the scrap markets in the Midwest have been slow to settle with only a few deals done as of Tuesday morning. The expectation by those involved in the Midwest ferrous scrap markets is that the transactions will be completed over the next day or two. Most […]
The U.S. steel mills saw exports for steel products fall during the month of February. The U.S. Department of Commerce released new information late last week regarding the exports shipped out of the domestic steel mills to destinations outside the United States. Based on their data, exports totaled 878,459 net tons (note the data is […]
On Easter Sunday, US Steel began the layoff of 165 employees at its Irvin plant at Mon Valley Works in West Mifflin, Pa. The layoffs are expected to be short term and according to Local Union 2227 President Kevin McKelvey, some of the workers could be back on the job as early as next week. […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued to slide their slide this past week according to all of the steel price indexes followed by Steel Market Update. Benchmark hot rolled dropped to $460 per ton ($459 at CRU), down $10-$12 per ton depending on the index chosen. A number to keep in mind: $390 per ton. That […]
SurveyMonkey.com handles our flat rolled steel market analysis (surveys) and sends out invitations twice per month. They have made some changes to the way they send out the surveys and the way you access the questionnaire. If you normally get a invitation and have not seen it please check your SPAM folder as it is […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce just released Final Census data regarding February 2015 total steel imports. The US DOC reported imports of foreign steel as being 3,711,541 net tons. What is interesting to us is the Final Census number is 127,975 tons more than what was presented as the Preliminary Census number on March 24th. […]
Based on the most recent license data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce (SIMA) on Tuesday of this week, steel imports appear to be trending toward the 3.6 million net ton level. This is less than what we saw earlier in the month when license data was trending toward a 3.8 million net ton […]
A reminder to our readers that we will not be publishing our Steel Market Update newsletter on Sunday due to the Easter Holiday. We will go back to our normal publishing schedule on Tuesday, April 7th. Our offices will be open on Friday and Monday and we can be reached at: 800-432-3475 or by email: […]
Last week Steel Market Update adjusted our Price Momentum Indicator from Lower to Neutral. We believe that change is coming and the wholesale slide we have seen in flat rolled steel prices will come to an end. We have not yet come to the conclusion that prices will reverse direction, rather that prices on hot […]
In the table below, Steel Market Update provides a snapshot look at various flat rolled steel pricing, commodities which impact steel prices and economic data of importance to the flat rolled steel industry. One of the first items you will notice on the end of month table provided is we moved our Price Momentum indicator […]
Iron ore prices, which for a period of time had firmed up around $60 per dry metric ton, have been sliding lately with The Steel Index (TSI) reporting 62% Fe fines at $51.0/dmt CFR Tianjin Port, China earlier today. This is the lowest level reported by TSI since they began indexing iron ore prices back […]
Last week a number of steel mill CEO’s testified before the U.S. Congress about the flood of steel imports and the need to protect the domestic steel industry. Separate from the CEO’s testimony, former Nucur CEO called for quotas to be implemented against foreign steel which he considered to be unfairly traded. Steel Market Update […]
A note to those interested in attending our Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop in May. The workshop is about 50 percent fully registered at this time. The location is Merriville, Indiana just outside of Chicago. Our mill tour will be of the NLMK Indiana electric arc furnace (EAF) plant which […]
Benchmark hot rolled pricing has tightened, according to the various flat rolled steel indices we follow. With SteelBenchmarker reporting this past week all four indexes were within a few dollars of one another with SMU and Platts at $470 per ton, CRU $1 higher at $471 and SteelBenchmarker $3 higher at $473 per ton. Our […]
The American Institute for International Steel issued the following report on February 2015 steel imports into the United States. Imports, which declined in February compared to January, are 23 percent higher than at this time last year and one of the major reasons why service center inventories are taking so long to adjust. The higher […]
This will be an interesting week as we watch to see how the negotiations between the domestic steel mills and their suppliers end. Expectations are mixed. Late last week we received a note from one of the larger scrap companies in the U.S. They told us, “Generally speaking, obsolete scrap flows have remained tepid in […]
With the steel executives testifying before the U.S. Congress today about foreign steel imports we thought it might be interesting to ask Dan DiMicco former CEO of Nucor Steel about the subject. Mr. DiMicco responded to our request with the following: Where do I start???? First let me say this is Dan DiMicco responding not […]
Earlier today, Steel Market Update adjusted our SMU Price Momentum Indicator from “Lower” to “Neutral.” Since November 16, 2014 the SMU Price Momentum Indicator has been pointing toward “Lower” steel prices. Prior to November 16th we had a period of time where our Momentum Indicator vacillated between Neutral and Lower going back to May 2014. […]
First, before everyone goes completely crazy regarding the US Steel announcement to “idle” the Granite City Works steel plant, SMU has been told by Courtney Boone, US Steel media spokesperson, that the plant would not go down prior to May 28, 2015. A lot can happen (and will happen) in the industry prior to that […]
There is no joy in Mudville in the middle of March, the scrap market is dead and no mills are looking to add to their inventories. For that matter the dealers have very little to offer as the weather has yet to clear up north and the big move lower in scrap prices in February […]
So, why haven’t we released our program for the upcoming Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta on September 1 & 2, 2015? Well, we are waiting until we have all of our keynote speakers confirmed and committed. We believe we will have an exceptional program once again this year. As we have in the past, our […]