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    Distributors/Service Centers

    December 8, 2013

    Service Centers Pushing Spot Prices Higher

    Written by John Packard

    The U.S. service centers are believers and, according to their customers as well as the distributors themselves, they are raising spot prices on flat rolled steel. It has been Steel Market Update’s opinion for quite some time that for domestic mill price increases to continue to rise the service centers need to support the increases and push spot prices higher.

    Of the manufacturing companies responding to our most recent steel market analysis 65 percent reported service centers as raising spot flat rolled steel prices. Another 31 percent of the respondents reported prices as stable while a small fraction (4 percent) reported they were seeing lower prices out of the distributors.

    John Packard

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