Manufacturing companies are beginning to report a fracture within the service center ranks. In our latest steel market analysis conducted last week, 12 percent of the manufacturers reported decreasing spot flat rolled prices from their service center suppliers. This is up from 4 percent measured at the beginning of December which was up from zero […]
Last week Steel Market Update invited approximately 600 companies to participate in our mid-December 2013 flat rolled steel market survey. Of the companies responding this past week, 49 percent were manufacturing companies, 39 percent were service centers/wholesalers, 4 percent trading companies, 3 percent steel mills, 3 percent toll processors and 2 percent suppliers to the […]
U.S. Steel – POSCO Industries (UPI) has opened their March flat rolled steel order book and in the process the company has put out a letter to their customers advising of the new minimum base prices the mill will be charging for hot rolled pickled & Oiled (HRPO), cold rolled (fully annealed) and hot dipped […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) communicated with Todd Leebow, President of Majestic Steel about their just announced purchase of Flat Rolled Steel, Inc. We asked him how the Flat Rolled Steel, Inc. will be handled, what it added to their company and what plans did Majestic have as they move into the Southwestern section of the […]
Steel Market Update continues to expand and one of the areas we are looking to expand into is the world of plate. As we enter the New Year we will begin indexing discreet plate pricing as we do hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steels. We also are changing our CPI (Comparison Price Indices) […]
According to The Steel Index (TSI), iron ore spot prices were reported at $132.7 per dry metric ton CFR Tianjin Port (China) for 62% Fe fines and $120.5/dmt on 58% Fe fines. Trading was quiet this week as TSI reported 62% Fe prices down $3.30/dmt and 58% Fe prices down $4.70/dmt over the past week. […]
We will slowly begin adding plate articles and pricing commentary to our Executive Newsletter as we enter the new year. We believe this is a natural product for us to follow. If you company is a buyer of plate and you would like to help contribute to our knowledge base we would greatly appreciate it. […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Steel Buyers Sentiment Index was reported this week to be +37 which is 2 points lower than our last reading made during the first week of December. Nonetheless, SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment is well within the optimistic range of our index where it has been for 24 consecutive months. Sentiment […]
Lead times continue to be longer than normal with hot rolled averaging more than 4 weeks (4.23 weeks), cold rolled exceeding 6 weeks (6.04 weeks), galvanized at 6.51 weeks and Galvalume averaging 6.83 weeks. All of the flat rolled steel lead times measured this week are extended compared to last year during the middle of […]
Majestic Steel, a flat rolled steel service center located in the Cleveland, Ohio area, announced on Wednesday their acquisition of Flat Rolled Steel, Inc. which has locations/offices in Tulsa, OK; Grand Prairie, Texas (Dallas) and Houston, Texas. In a letter to their new customers, Majestic Steel provided no details of the purchase. Todd Leebow, President […]
A note about our Steel Market Update newsletter publication schedule for the remainder of the year and into the first few days of 2014. Our Executive Newsletter (this one) will be published on Sunday, December 22nd and then we won’t publish again until Sunday, December 29th. This can change based on what is happening in […]
On Monday U.S. Steel put out a letter to their customers announcing a $20 per ton flat rolled spot price increase. The letter was from RY Kopf, General Manager North American Flat-Rolled Marketing and it read as follows: Effective immediately, base pricing for all new Flat-rolled products spot orders is increased by a minimum of […]
U.S. Steel announced a price increase on Monday and the market appears to be cautiously optimistic as we enter the end of 2013 and look out into the New Year. The announcement itself was termed a “non-event” by one of the construction related steel mills with whom we spoke this afternoon as increases had previously […]
According to data just released by the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) total steel inventories dropped slightly during the month of November while steel shipments were off 11,500 tons per day compared to the daily rate reported for the month of October. When compared to last November shipments improved by 6,200 tons per day and […]
Steel Market Update continues to enhance our proprietary service center inventory model which we call SMU Apparent Excess/Deficit. We are now forecasting service center inventories using our model and, for that reason, in the future we will move this data into the Premium Level within our website. Using our model shipments, shipments were up year-over-year […]
We want to take a moment to remind our Executive Members (as well as our trial members) that we have a section under the Resources tab for steel mills. Once there you can navigate to the Furnace Status sub-menu tab and then over to the Blast Furnace tab where you can access the most up-to-date […]
For those of you going to New York City for the AHR Expo – I will be attending on Tuesday, January 21st and Wednesday, January 22nd. If you would like to meet with me while I am in New York, please shoot me an email: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com and I will do my best to work you […]
California Steel Industries (CSI) opened their February order book and became the first domestic mill to announce a new round of flat rolled price increases. In a letter to their customers dated December 13, 2013 the mill advised, “Due to changing market conditions, California Steel Industries is increasing transaction prices by a minimum of the […]
The spread between the various indices followed by Steel Market Update narrowed this past week with only $5 separating the indexes on benchmark hot rolled coil pricing. Platts dropped $5 per ton and met Steel Market Update at $675 per ton while all of the other indices came in at $670 per ton. Cold rolled […]
The marketplace is buzzing as to why the mills east of the Rockies have not yet made a price increase announcement. Someone mentioned to me last week that ArcelorMittal could not push prices higher without attracting attention to themselves due to the announced purchase of ThyssenKrupp Steel USA. AM does not want to be accused […]
We communicated with one of our main Asian contacts over the past few days. We wanted to know what they have been seeing regarding new carbon sheet price offers out of China for their European customers (this source does not ship steel to the USA). We also wanted to learn more about iron ore prices […]
My final thoughts will be brief this evening. I would like to remind both service centers and manufacturing companies if your company has news – expansion plans, new executives, bringing a plant back to North America from overseas, etc. we would like to know. Please send any press releases or correspondence to: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com My feet […]
Steel buyers advised Steel Market Update that there has been very little movement in flat rolled steel prices this week. We did make a correction to the range on galvanized coils adjusting the lower end of the range to $38.50/cwt based on the data we collected directly from buyers this week. We also saw small […]
The U.S. ferrous scrap market has seen prices moving higher during the first 10 days of December. We have seen shredded scrap prices moving $20 to $45 per gross ton depending on the market. Busheling has been more plentiful and has managed to remain stable to up $10 in most markets. We asked one of […]
The other day Steel Market Update wrote an article about steel buyers anticipating a flat rolled steel price increase announcement out of the domestic mills prior to the end of the year. Not everyone is a believer that will occur and we got several emails and phone calls pointing out short lead times at a […]
U.S. Steel took down their Fairfield blast furnace just before Thanksgiving. We are hearing that it may be down 45-60 days although one customer of the mill’s told us by the end of December. The steel mill prepared for the furnace to go down and customers were told to place their orders some time ago. […]
In the first half of 2013 the profit on one ton of steel sold in China was only 0.43 Yuan. At that rate, it took the sale of two tons to earn just enough money to buy an ice cream bar or Popsicle. A far cry from peak profits of 1000 Yuan per ton. The […]
The U.S. service centers are believers and, according to their customers as well as the distributors themselves, they are raising spot prices on flat rolled steel. It has been Steel Market Update’s opinion for quite some time that for domestic mill price increases to continue to rise the service centers need to support the increases […]
With the exception of SMU all of the flat rolled steel indices were status quo from last week to this week. Benchmark hot rolled is right about $670 for everyone but Platts who sees the market up $10 higher than everyone else. Cold rolled is $780ish for everyone but Steel Orbis who has it down […]
Based on the results from our recent steel market analysis of the flat rolled steel service centers we found inventory levels increased to 2.30 months. As you can see by the graphic below, the Steel Market Update service center inventory levels tend to make very modest changes. It will be interesting to see if the […]