Steel Market Update (SMU) has been producing our Steel Buyers Basics series off and on since we officially started the company in August 2008. The purpose of this series of articles was to provide educational materials and articles to the flat rolled steel industry in the hopes that those reading our material who start to […]
Here is what I know/understand regarding the situation at US Steel as of early Sunday evening, April 13th. Our sources are advising us USS is moving iron ore from Great Lakes to Gary. We are also following the vessels which are now being reported as in port in Minnesota loading ore. We are aware that […]
Because of the severity of the curtailment of steelmaking at US Steel Gary Works and the shut down of steelmaking operations at USS Great Lakes we feel it is important to update our readers and the greater steel community as to what we have learned over the past 48 hours. First, Great Lakes steelmaking operations […]
Service centers and steel brokers within the secondary (non-prime) segment of the flat rolled industry are advising Steel Market Update that prices on secondary are rising just as quickly as prime. Production problems at a number of mills, coupled with logistics problems holding back shipments from some mill locations, has helped tighten inventories of vanilla […]
The following article is written by Andre Marshall, CEO of Crunchrisk, LLC and our instructor for our Managing Price Risk and Managing Price Risk 2: Strategies & Execution workshops. Financial Markets: Well we are a fairly precarious point in the S+P 500 and DOW. You might recall that we were headed to 1900 to test […]
Steel Market Update is aware that many buyers and sellers of steel have been keyed in on the variations between various flat rolled steel indexes. In the past, Steel Market Update found the spread between our steel index and those of Platts and CRU to generally be negligible ($1-$10 per ton at any one time). […]
Steel Market Update was forwarded the following article by one of our contacts in Asia. The article quotes the China Iron & Steel Association (CISA) which reported high levels of debt within the Chinese steel industry. The Chinese appear destined to repeat what happened to the U.S. steel industry during the early 2000’s when many […]
To our Premium Level members – just a quick note to let you know that we publish Premium articles to the front of the website prior to sending them out in a supplemental newsletter. We have been waiting for imports by product, port and country to become available before we send out a supplemental issue. […]
“Mills are stubborn this week. We’ll see what happens when US gets caught back up,” is how one steel executive pegged the market for Steel Market Update earlier today. Many of the steel service centers we spoke to over the past few days are indicating there is strengthening demand in portions of their business. What […]
This week was a tough one to figure out where transaction prices actually are at this moment in time. What makes it challenging is mill offers appear to be firm from mill to mill with very little wiggle room at this moment. The second issue making things tough to evaluate pricing is we had a […]
US Steel has been very cooperative answering Steel Market Update inquiries regarding the status of their Gary Works and Great Lakes steel mills. Both mills have issues regarding steelmaking operations. Because the steel industry is prone to over-react when production issues hit any mill we thought it prudent to try to understand to the best […]
Scrap prices rose by varying amounts around the country. In Chicago and Detroit prices rose from $5 to $15 per ton depending on the product. Both areas were impacted by the reduction of production at USS Gary Works (Chicago) and Great Lakes (Detroit). Detroit was the first to settle at up $10 per gross ton […]
More flat rolled steel mills have joined in and raised flat rolled steel prices over the past couple of days. On Friday, April 4th USS/POSCO sent a letter to their customers advising them that flat rolled steel base prices would rise by $30 per ton ($1.50/cwt) on all products. UPI opened their June order book […]
For Thursday night’s issue my goal is to attempt to produce as accurate lead times for each mill as possible. This is easy for some mills who publish lead times on a weekly or, in at least one case, daily basis. Other mills hold the information a little closer to the vest. If you have […]
Steel Market Update requested information from US Steel regarding the status of USS Gary Works, which has been running steelmaking at reduced capacity due to a lack of raw materials and, USS Great Lakes which has steelmaking operations temporarily down due to damages suffered when a main collector pipe fell collapsing part of the roof […]
On Friday morning, April 4th, Nucor became the first mill to announce a new wave of flat rolled steel price increases. In a letter to their customers, the Nucor Sheet Mill managers advised that effective immediately, minimum base prices would be as follows: Hot Rolled = $34.25/cwt ($685 per ton)Cold Rolled = $40.75/cwt ($815 per […]
Steel Market Update began this week with an article on Sunday evening titled, “This Could Be a Tumultuous Week.” Looking back over the past five days that title was an understatement. This week has been tumultuous times ten. Why? U.S. Steel can’t seem to catch a break. They now have steelmaking operations temporarily suspended at […]
All of the indexes followed by Steel Market Update saw their averages on hot rolled, cold rolled and coated rise this past week (except Platts which remained the same). We are seeing the indices moving higher very quickly as the domestic steel mills firm up their order books at the previously announced $660 level on […]
We are receiving many emails from readers and others associated with the flat rolled steel industry regarding the current state of the market, responses to the past two articles written by David Phelps (former president of the AIIS and one of our contributing writers) and on a number of other topics. We appreciate and encourage […]
In a letter to their customers, US Steel advised that their Gary Works blast furnaces and steelmaking operations will be down temporarily due to “unforeseen and unprecedented ice conditions on the Great Lakes that is delaying the transportation of critical raw materials.” The mill went on to say that these conditions have not occurred on […]
The situation at US Steel Great Lakes, and now Gary Works, has not bridled the enthusiasm which has been growing within the flat rolled steel markets. We are seeing buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel continuing to be optimistic about their company’s ability to be successful in both today’s market as well as three […]
Mill lead times moved out over the past two weeks. We are seeing lead times extending by as much as one week on hot rolled and cold rolled and three quarters of a week on galvanized. We did some quick checking and HRC, CRC and GI lead times are the furthest we have recorded since […]
Buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel are reporting the domestic steel mills as much less willing to negotiate prices this week as compared to two weeks ago. Our market analysis saw major contraction in each of the products with hot rolled moving from 85 percent down to 48 percent. Cold rolled halved their previous […]
Today is the 3rd of April and negotiations between the steel mills and their scrap suppliers continue in earnest. We heard from one of our sources that Detroit has settled up $10 per gross ton. Our source reported #1 Heavy Melt (HMS) at $365-$370 per gross ton, shredded scrap at $395-$400 per gross ton and […]
As Steel Market Update has mentioned in the past we encourage and welcome all viewpoints on topics. A recent letter written by David Phelps, the retired president of the American Institute for International Steel (AIIS), entitled “Anti-Dumping Cases Threatened, Now What?” elicited the following response: “I appreciate the opportunity to comment on your April 1, […]
The spread between domestic (U.S.) hot rolled prices (FOB mill) and the world export hot rolled coil pricing rose this week to $146 per net ton after having shrunk to $115 last week. This jump represents a $31 per ton jump in the spread in one week (based on SMU numbers not Platts $655 number). […]
The month of March proved to be an interesting month for the flat rolled steel industry and related commodities associated with the industry, both within North America and around the world. The biggest news was the move by the domestic mills to raise flat rolled steel prices. ArcelorMittal led the way on March 17th when […]
Every month we track a number of the other steel indexes including the two used the most for contract adjustments: CRU and Platts. We had some interesting results as the month of March closed as all of the indices showed declines (compared to the end of the prior month) in hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized […]
US Steel’s Great Lakes (Ecorse) facility suffered a roof collapse at the #2 BOP on Thursday evening which has ceased steelmaking operations at the plant. According to our sources, the USS Great Lakes facility in Ecorse, Michigan only has one basic oxygen process plant (BOP) which is fed molten pig iron from the blast furnaces […]
For those of you paying attention to our website you are aware that we published an article first thing this morning about the US Steel Gary Works announcement. As we have mentioned in the past, one of the goals of the new website is to be able to get breaking news to our readers as […]