SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment, which measures how buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel feel about their company’s ability to be successful in the current market environment, continues at very optimistic levels. However, our Index has seen some erosion of enthusiasm as our Index has dropped 9 points since we recorded our record high of […]
Both manufacturing companies and service centers reported similar results regarding the status of spot pricing out of the distributors into their end user customers. Manufacturers reported distributors spot pricing as being either stable (no change) which gathered 73 percent of the responses or rising which attracted 23 percent of those manufacturing companies who responded to […]
Average mill lead times declined ever so slightly across all of the flat rolled steel products being watched by Steel Market Update. We have seen lead times bouncing within a relatively narrow range over the past couple of months as we continue to see a stable market. Hot rolled lead times averaged 4.30 weeks down […]
Based on our latest Steel Market Update analysis of the flat rolled steel markets, we are learning that the domestic steel mills were more willing to negotiate galvanized and Galvalume pricing than hot rolled and cold rolled steel pricing. The largest movement we saw was on Galvalume where 64 percent of our respondents reported the […]
We will publish our steel survey results tomorrow for our Premium Level members. Look for them to be on the website by early afternoon. The upcoming Steel Summit will be held iat the South side of the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC). The south side is the closest to the SkyTrain and the Marriott Gateway […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) analyzes foreign steel import license data on a weekly basis. From the data we can see where import tonnages are trending although we are not comfortable calling a specific number as the license data can be suspect until after the month is over. For the second week August license data is […]
U.S. Steel has begun to inform their customers of their intention to raise their zinc coating extras effective October 1, 2014. Unlike Nucor, USS did not go back to their 2011 price extras. Based on our quick analysis, the under .020” thru .018” G90 extra is being increased by $1.05/cwt or 11.3 percent. The new […]
According to data just released by the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) total steel shipments were 168,300 tons per day during the month of July 2014. This represents a 6.9 percent improvement over the July 2013 shipment rate. The total number of tons shipped during the month of July by U.S. steel distributors was 3,702,100 […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) has been looking at the growth of each flat rolled product during the first six months 2014 vs. the first six months 2013. What we found is how foreign steel has been usurping much of the apparent steel supply growth from the U.S. steel mills. Hot rolled shipments out of the […]
On Friday, August 15th, Nucor Plate Mill Group announced an increase on transaction prices for all new spot orders of carbon, alloy and heat-treated plate. Carbon and alloy plate prices were increased by $30 per ton ($1.50/cwt). Heat-treated plate prices were increased by $40 per ton ($2.00/cwt). Late last week our SMU plate indices average […]
Service center flat rolled shipments rose by 7 percent or, 1 percent more than we had forecast when we last produced our Apparent Excess/Deficit report for our Premium subscribers. Flat rolled shipments in July averaged 108,800 tons per day up from the 101,700 tons per day shipped last July. At the end of June we […]
One of the Steel Market Update proprietary products is our U.S. Service Center Apparent Inventory Excess/Deficit report and forecast. Once per month, SMU analyzes the MSCI flat rolled steel shipments and flat rolled steel inventories and we calculate whether the steel distributors are either over-inventories (excess) or under-inventoried (deficit) based on our proprietary formula. We […]
We are now two weeks away from the opening of our 4th Steel Summit Conference and our first two day conference. I am quite pleased at the response that we have received from a number of different fronts regarding our conference. Our conference is being held on September 3 & 4 which is only two […]
Spreads between the indexes are beginning to narrow as the market has been trending sideways (with a slight upward bias) for a number of weeks. Benchmark hot rolled numbers were up $2 per ton due to SteelBenchmarker reporting new numbers this past week (SteelBenchmarker only reports prices twice per month). The average of all the […]
The Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) reported shipment and inventory data to paid subscribers on Friday. The steel industry media will receive the data on Monday. Steel Market Update will produce a number of reports based on the MSCI data. We will have our normal shipment and inventories for the U.S. and Canada for our […]
Steel Market Update communicated with a number of the galvanized steel mills and learned that galvanized steel buyers should anticipate new coating extras out of most, if not all, of the domestic steel mills. Our discussions with the galvanizing mills found conversations are being held within the mills as they question whether they should return […]
With Nucor making a move and raising their coating extras, we decided to conduct a quick review of the LME spot zinc market going back to when the previous coating extra changes were made (prices were lowered) with the announcements being made just prior to January 2012. First, we will take a look at the […]
One of the west coast steel mills, California Steel Industries (CSI), has advised their customers that, “Due to changing market conditions, effective immediately, California Steel Industries is increasing transaction prices by a minimum of the following: Hot Rolled = $25.00/tonP&O = $25.00/tonCold Rolled = $25.00/tonGalvanized = $25.00/ton” The letter was dated August 13, 2014. […]
Early indications, based on steel import license data, are suggesting August steel imports will once again exceed 3.5 million net tons and could go as high as 4.0 million tons. The high so far this year was May at 4.033 million net tons. May 2014 was also the highest import level seen since prior to […]
I got a note from a manufacturing company regarding the size of the Nucor move on galvanized coating extras. The comment that was made was, “Zinc average for 2014 is up 8.6% since average of 2012. Nucor increase is way too high.” This steel buyer went on to comment, “Aluminum average in same time period […]
The market continues to be firm and prices have remained relatively stable over the past few weeks. We are finding the number of outliers, those companies buying at the extreme highs or extreme lows has shrunk. Most products are being offered close to the averages referenced below. At the moment the weakest products appears to […]
We spent the last two days canvassing as many buyers and mill sellers of steel as we possibly could. Our goal was to gather enough information so we could speak to the development of this market and the direction prices should go from here. What we found is a market that is perhaps stronger than […]
The service centers who sell secondary or excess prime flat rolled steels are reporting a very tight market as less material is being made available out of the steel mills and holes are developing in steel service center inventories. Secondary steel buying prices out of the domestic mills have been moving up but have not […]
Due to the higher LME zinc spot prices which have surged from about $.88 per pound in late March 2014 to just below $1.10 per pound in mid to late July, Nucor became the first steel mill to adjust their zinc coating extras for galvanized steel. With little fanfare, Nucor published new extras on the […]
We are starting to learn that the holdup on the flat rolled dumping suits has been due to the desire by the domestic mills to protect the automotive companies. If suits are filed look for exclusions on I.F. steels and potentially coils wider than 60 inches. We have heard from both mill and non-mill sources […]
Flat rolled steel price indexes followed by Steel Market Update on a weekly basis saw prices continuing to be firm to slightly higher on most products. Benchmark hot rolled coil prices averaged $676 per ton, up $2 per ton compared to the previous week’s average. SMU HRC pricing remained stable at $675 per ton while […]
Last week, Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our early August flat rolled steel market survey. We emailed invitations to approximately 600 companies who are actively involved in either buying or selling flat rolled steels. This past week 45 percent of the respondents were from steel service centers, 43 percent were manufacturing companies, 7 percent were […]
As mentioned in a previous article in this newsletter, during our flat rolled steel market survey process we break out the different market segments into questionnaires that are dedicated to their industry. This allows us to compare market trends to see if they match. A good example is manufacturing demand. We asked manufacturing companies if […]
As of Monday we will have 16 working days before our 4th Steel Summit Conference (22 total days) and the work only gets more intense for those of us working to put on a great conference. There is still time to register which you can do on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com or by calling our office: […]
This afternoon, Steel Market Update reported the SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index +68 for early August 2014. This is the highest level ever recorded and the most optimistic we have seen buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel since the Sentiment Index began in November 2008. Positive numbers (above zero) indicate an optimistic attitude exists […]