In a letter to their customers, the Nucor Plate Group raised transaction prices on plate products by a minimum of $80 per ton ($4.00/cwt).

This transactional price increase is $20 per ton less than a similar increase announcement made by SSAB earlier this week.

At the same time, the Nucor Plate Group advised their plate customers of their new Raw Material Surcharge, which is effective with orders acknowledged to ship the week ending February 27, 2011. The new Raw Material Surcharge is for all carbon and alloy discrete plate from coil.

The Raw Material Surcharge on discrete plate will be $293 per ton or $14.65/cwt.

The surcharge is based on AMM shredded auto scrap benchmark using the Chicago Consumer Buying Price. The AMM shredded scrap price from this past week is $455 per long ton. Deducted from the $455 number is the shredded "program baseline" which is $162. The difference between the $455 and $162 being the new Raw Material Surcharge.

In the same announcement, Nucor also advised their steel plate customers of the Fuel Surcharges for truck carriers beginning March 1, 2011. The new fuel surcharge is 23%.

For more information about North American flat rolled steel products - including discrete plate as well as hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steels - you may be interested in our Steel Market Update newsletter which is published three times per week. You can register for a free trial of the newsletter on our website or by clicking here.

We also recommend taking a moment to review our new Steel 101: An Introduction to the Making and Rolling of Steel workshop which you can do by clicking here.