The Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI) released shipment and inventory data on the U.S. service centers this week. Total steel shipments of all steel products rose on a daily basis in August compared to July. The daily shipment rate was 173,000 net tons and shipments totaled 3,634,000 tons. The number of tons shipped was essentially […]
Canadian shipments for all steel products in the month of August were 456,600 net tons, a decrease of 5.3 percent from the month before and a decrease of 4.6 percent from August 2013. Inventories at the end of the month stood at 1,499,500 tons, up 2.2 percent from last month and up 8.0 percent from […]
Nucor is expecting higher profitability for its sheet steel, structural, bar and plate operations for third quarter. In their quarterly guidance, Nucor noted that manufactured goods, including energy and automotive, are their strongest markets. The high level of imports continues to pressure prices downward. Growth in the residential market has benefited the fabricated construction products […]
On Monday, Nucor announced their intention to acquire Gallatin Steel and its approximately 1.8 million tons of hot rolling capacity. Today, AK Steel and Steel Dynamics (SDI) completed the purchase of the Severstal North America assets. The biggest pieces of the Severstal deal are the Dearborn steel mill, which went to AK Steel, and the Columbus […]
On Monday, Nucor announced their intention to acquire Gallatin Steel and its approximately 1.8 million tons of hot rolling capacity. On Tuesday, AK Steel and Steel Dynamics (SDI) completed the purchase of the Severstal North America assets. The biggest pieces of the Severstal deal are the Dearborn steel mill, which went to AK Steel, and the […]
Flat rolled steel prices moved lower this past week according to the various steel price indexes followed by Steel Market Update. The largest movement was seen in cold rolled prices but hot rolled prices and Galvalume prices also fell during the past week. The one item which did not see erosion was galvanized prices which […]
On Monday Steel Market Update received information from one of our trading sources in Asia regarding the iron ore situation and price offers for export on rebars (debars), hot rolled (Europe) and plate (Europe). Ore Port Stocks at 110.95 Million MTS on Friday and an increase of 320,000mts week on week. Many large State Owned […]
Flat rolled steel prices continue to slip lower as the various indexes watched by Steel Market Update begin to come to a consensus as the spreads between the indexes shrink. Platts dropped their benchmark hot rolled price by $5 per ton and CRU by $2 per ton. SteelBenchmarker did not report prices this week as […]
Are foreign steel prices too low or are US steel prices too high? That is a question faced by trade litigation attorneys Robert Schagrin and Lewis Leibowitz at the recent SMU Steel Summit conference in Atlanta. There is a $300 delta between China and US prices and a $200 delta between Europe and the US […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released final census data for July steel imports this past week. Total imports were 3,858,692 net tons which was 247,387 tons greater than what we saw during the month of June. License data is pointing toward a slightly lower total volume for total steel imports during the month of August. […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued to slip this past week according to our analysis of the various flat rolled price indexes we follow on a regular basis. The benchmark hot rolled average dropped $6 per ton to $671 per ton with SMU being the lowest at $665 and SteelBenchmarker the highest at $677 per ton. […]
The spreads between the various steel price indexes watched on a weekly basis by Steel Market Update have been shrinking. With the exception of plate (which had price increase announcements during the week) and SMU cold rolled, all of the other flat rolled steel price indices either moved sideways or moved lower this past week. […]
Late last week both ArcelorMittal and SSAB advised their customers of their intention to raise plate prices. Both companies followed the Nucor lead which was made on Monday of this past week, to raise carbon as rolled plate by $30 per ton ($1.50/cwt) and alloy, heat-treated, normalized and quenched and tempered plate prices by $40 […]
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 […]
Canadian shipments for all steel products in the month of July were 482,400 net tons, an increase of 0.3 percent from the month before and an increase of 5.0 percent from July 2013. Inventories at the end of the month stood at 1,467,800 tons, up 5.5 percent from last month and up 0.4 percent from […]
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 […]
Total service center carbon steel shipments in July increased by 11,600 tons to 3.539 million tons. Shipping days also increased, from 21 to 22. On a tons per day basis, (t/d) shipments decreased from 168,000 tons in June to 160,900 in July but the latest data has the best shipments of any July since 2008. […]
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 […]
One of our contributing writers (and Steel 101 instructor) Peter Wright, analyzes foreign steel import data once every couple of months in order to see how accurate the license data is trending versus the Final Census data which is produced once per month (2 months behind receipt of foreign steel). We recently received Final Census […]
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 […]
License data for July was updated on August 5th through the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department. The SMU publishes several import reports ranging from this very early look using licensed data to the very detailed analysis of final volumes by district of entry and source nation which is published in our […]
Flat rolled steel prices have been essentially trending sideways for the past couple of weeks and this past week was no exception. We saw our hot rolled average increase by $3 per ton to $673 per ton with the CRU having the lowest HRC pricing at $667 per ton and Platts the highest at $680 […]
Preliminary steel import data was updated late last week by the US Department of Commerce, reporting total June imports at 3,585,781 net tons, down 11.1 percent over May levels and down 4.1 percent over April levels. Compared to the same month one year ago, total June 2014 steel imports are up 45.8 percent or 1,125,697 […]
With the announcement of the sale of Russian owned Severstal North America assets to AK Steel (Dearborn, Mountain State Carbon & Joint Ventures) and Steel Dynamics (Columbus) for $2.325 billion, the market is now asking what, or who, is next. There are two mills that are being mentioned. One, Gallatin Steel, a hot rolled mini-mill […]
Improved demand and higher prices in North America helped SAAB Americas report a strong profit for second quarter and the first half of 2014 after reporting losses in both time periods in 2013. SSAB Americas steel sales soared 15 percent year over year in the second quarter of 2014 and 9 percent on a quarterly […]
The US Department of Commerce released steel import license data through the first 22 days of the month of July. The most recent license data supports our belief that steel imports will meet or exceed the 3.7 million net tons reported for June and could meet or exceed the 4.0 million net tons received during […]
Steel Market Update watches a number of flat rolled steel indexes and once per week we provide our readers an analysis of what movement has occurred in each during the prior week. This week we found small movements, mostly indicating higher prices, in most of the indices. Hot rolled saw two indexes moving prices by […]
Total steel shipments (all products) out of the U.S. service centers totaled 3,687,600 tons according to data released by the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) for the month of June. This represents an increase of 10.2 percent compared to June 2013. There were 21 shipping days during June 2014 compared to 20 shipping days last […]
Total service center carbon steel shipments in June declined by 56,500 tons to 3.527 million tons. This was almost exactly the same decline as experienced in May and which together almost wiped out the April gain. Shipping days were 21 in June, the same as in April and May. April was the highest monthly shipping […]
Canadian shipments for all steel products in the month of June were 481,000 net tons, a decrease of 5.6 percent from the month before, but an increase of 6.0 percent from June 2013. Inventories at the end of the month stood at 1,391,100 tons, up 0.4 percent from last month but down 6.3 percent from […]