Industrial Production and Manufacturing Capacity Utilization – February 2013 Federal Reserve statistics for February 2013 indicate that manufacturing is in a “Warm” growth mode which confirms the Institute of Supply Management’s manufacturing index, orders for durable goods and the rate of growth of manufacturing employment. In three months through February IP grew 2.6% year over […]
Written by: Peter Wright The housing market is important to steel producers and processors for a number of reasons, some of which are not obvious. Not a lot of steel is consumed in wood framed houses but housing starts also lead sales of appliances and other steel items. Starts also positively affect ancillary non-residential construction […]
Written by: Peter Wright Canadian service center tons per day shipments in February were also down overall and for all individual product groups compared to February a year ago. Their total daily shipments were 76.3 percent of the pre recession level, ranging from 102.2 percent for plate to 70.2 percent for sheet. Of all steel […]
Written by: Peter Wright There are three information sources which taken together provide a picture of supply and demand in the U.S. steel market. There are the monthly AISI steel shipments, the Department of Commerce trade statistics and the MSCI report of shipments and inventories. In February total daily carbon steel shipments from service centers […]
Written by: Peter Wright Automotive production, inventory and sales; February 2013. Within NAFTA, the Detroit three lost production share in February compared to February last year, dropping from 52.1 percent to 51.5 percent. Performance amongst the three varied wildly with GM and Chrysler loosing 2.2 percent and 0.8 percent respectively as Ford gained 2.1 percent. […]
Written by: Peter Wright Rolled steel imports through February 2013. The Steel Import Licensing system is so predictive of the final numbers that it’s quite valid to incorporate licensed tonnage into a current report. This means that by mid month a detailed import report can run for the previous month. License data does not include […]
Written by: Peter Wright Producer price indexes, (PPI), of sheet steel and competing materials. Each month the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) puts out its series of producer price indexes, for thousands of goods and materials. The latest release on Thursday reported February results. Some of the PPI are helpful in monitoring the competitive price […]
Written by: Peter Wright Rolled steel exports in January increased 11.6 percent from December but were down by 193,000 tons from January 2012. The table below summarizes export steel trade by product with trend comparisons. Percentage changes are all on a three month moving average basis to reduce the noise in the data. Total exports […]
Written by: Peter Wright Sheet steel shipments in January were 4,343,000 tons, an increase of 322,000 tons over December’s volume. These figures are shipments to domestic locations plus exports based on the AISI AIS10 and Commerce Department trade reports. The following table breaks the total down into individual products and measures the growth and contraction […]
Written by: Peter Wright Net job creation in January exceeded expectations with a headline value of 236,000. Built into this number is data that can validate, (or not) other statistics of interest to steel producers and processors. The big picture is 1,966,000 jobs have been created in the last 12 months and we are tracking […]
Written by: Peter Wright The Commerce Department releases construction expenditure data on the first working day of each month, referred to as “Construction put in place” or CPIP. This data has to be sub divided because sectors do not move synchronously. They are affected by supply / demand fundamentals and sources of financing. CPIP is […]