On Monday morning Steel Market Update (SMU) learned Nucor has been verbally informing their customers of their intention to raise spot pricing to $31.00/cwt ($620 per ton) on hot rolled and $36.00/cwt base ($720 + extras) on both cold rolled and galvanized plus applicable extras.

SMU sampled a number of Nucor customers to see if they had been informed of the change and those in the South and East had. Not every geographical location had received the news of specific changes although they had been warned last week prices would be changing some time this week.

It is still very early in the process and it is not yet known if all Nucor plants are going to follow the pricing guidelines suggested above nor have we seen any price announcements out of other mills at this time.

One buyer told SMU, "I don't know anybody who is going to give Nucor any business at these pricing levels." He then went on to tell SMU their company was placing business this week at numbers under $30.00/cwt for hot rolled and well under $36.00/cwt base on CR and Galvanized.

Steel Market Update will continue to watch how the market receives any new pricing announcements as they come out. We will publish more about market prices in our Tuesday evening edition of our SMU newsletter.

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