Tag: steel

What's the steel market talking about at present?

Rig counts in the US and Canada were mixed again for the week ended Feb. 16. The US saw totals move down, while Canadian rig figures ticked up week on week (w/w), Baker Hughes’ latest data shows.

SMU’s Current Steel Buyers’ Sentiment Index was flat this week, while the Future Sentiment Index slipped, according to our most recent survey data.

The scrap export market has demonstrated resiliency so far this year from the US East Coast. This strength has mainly come from the Turkish market. Despite weakening orders for rebar in their domestic market, imported scrap prices have held up until the last several days. The US West Coast is not as active, but there are orders in South Asia and in South America that are keeping things afloat.

What a difference a month makes. There are a few full bulls left in the room, but their numbers are dwindling. We’ll release results of our full steel market survey tomorrow afternoon. I took a sneak peak at the data on Thursday. And more people than I expected think that US hot-rolled (HR) coil prices will be in the $700s per short ton (st) two months from now. Vanishingly few think prices will be above $1,000/st in mid-April.

It’s no secret that HRC futures have been particularly volatile over the past several years. The most recent instance was the outsized break in the March futures contract early this week. For companies procuring raw material in anticipation of higher prices or even to get ahead on future purchase orders from customers, understanding the relative price of that raw material versus the hot-rolled coil futures curve is important.

US hot-rolled coil (HRC) prices moved lower again this week, remaining largely on a downtrend since mid-January. The result has caused domestic tags to lessen their price premium over imported products week on week (w/w).

The spread between hot-rolled coil (HRC) and prime scrap prices narrowed further this month, according to SMU’s most recent pricing data.

Mill lead times for flat-rolled steel were mostly stable over the past two weeks. With several mills slow to come out of outages and upgrades, cold rolled and coated lead times have been holding up better than hot rolled.

The percentage of sheet buyers finding mills willing to negotiate spot pricing rose or remained relatively flat on the products SMU surveys, while plate slumped, according to our most recent survey data.

Algoma Steel has restarted its blast furnace and resumed steelmaking at its mill in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

Flat Rolled = 60.3 Shipping Days of Supply Plate = 63.4 Shipping Days of Supply Flat Rolled US service center flat-rolled steel supply declined in January, though less than expected because of a weaker-than-normal seasonal increase in shipments to start the year. At the end of January, service centers carried 60.3 shipping days of supply […]

Reliance Inc. – formerly Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. – introduced its “new company identity” that emphasized its “evolution to more than steel,” the company said in its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings report.

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. announced on Thursday, Feb. 15, that it will indefinitely idle tinplate production at its mill in Weirton, W.Va.

Weak demand and pricing for graphite electrodes combined with higher costs are forcing GrafTech to implement cost-cutting procedures and reduce production across its facilities.

Reliance has entered into an agreement to purchase Houston-based American Alloy Steel Inc. for an undisclosed sum.

Sheet prices have fallen again this week on shorter lead times, higher imports, and potentially higher inventories. (We’ll see for sure when we release our service center shipment and inventory data next week.) I remember reporting almost exactly the same thing about a month ago and getting a fair amount of pushback. Not so much these days.

The pace of sheet price declines accelerated this week as steel buyers said that domestic mills were competing against each other while also coping with higher-than-expected import volumes. “They are getting rid of the fluff. When you can pit 2-3 mills against each other, the fat margins get cut,” one industry source said.

Prices for galvanized products have been falling for more than a month, and market participants expect this trend to continue in the near term.

Bull Moose Tube Co. (BMT) is now offering jumbo hollow structural sections (HSS) in the US market.

The US apparent steel supply moved up to 7.79 million short tons (st) in December, a rise of 2% from 7.67 million st in November, according to data from the Department of Commerce and the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). Apparent steel supply is determined by combining domestic steel mill shipments and finished US […]

The iron ore market has been largely calm, with China observing the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday period, while demand in Europe and JKT has been slow to pick up. Supply has been somewhat weaker, but overall, the price has held steady. Supply from Port Hedland remained unchanged w/w despite Roy Hill having no shipments […]

Domestic production of raw steel increased again last week, according to the most recent data from the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). Output moved higher for the second straight week after declining for more than a month to start the year.

What’s something going on in the market that no one is talking about? That’s a question on our survey, and was also posed to many who graced the stage at our Tampa Steel Conference. Perhaps another way to phrase that is “not talking about publicly” or connecting the dots of steel market chatter to find a uniting central issue. I thought one respondent to our survey really summed up the current moment: “Right now it is all politics.”

Last week, steel consumers prevailed in a rare victory over US petitioners in trade cases on tin mill steel products. The US International Trade Commission (ITC) voted 4—0 that Cleveland-Cliffs, the sole remaining domestic producer of tin mill products (used to make containers such as “tin cans”) was neither injured nor threatened with injury by imports of competing products from Canada, China, and Germany. Imports from South Korea were found to be “negligible,” and the investigation on Korean imports was terminated. 

ArcelorMittal indicated that a sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel could lead to it taking full control of AM/NS Calvert, its joint venture sheet mill in Alabama. "Typically, in such situations, when there is a selling partner, they sell it to the other partner in the joint venture, right. So I could imagine such a situation would develop,” Mittal said.

Steel prices stabilized in early January before they began to inflect lower midway through last month. Tags peaked at $1,045 per short ton (st) during the first week of January, even as some mills tried to push prices higher, to no avail. Hot-rolled coil (HRC) prices ended January at an average of $1,000/st, declining by $45/st during the month.

Based on initial license data for January, steel imports appear to have risen to a six-month high, and flat-rolled steel imports to a seven-month high.

Russel Metals has invested a lot in recent years, and it’s not done yet.

South Korean integrated steelmaker Posco has started building a 2.5-million-metric-ton-per-year (Mt/y) electric-arc furnace (EAF) at its Gwangyang works, a key stage in the company’s transition to becoming a green steel producer.