Final Thoughts

March 28, 2014

Friday was a sad day at Sparrows Point as the dismantling of the facility took on the BOF (basic oxygen furnace). There was a controlled demolition of the BOF on Friday. Essentially, this leaves only the blast furnace to be destroyed. One of our instructors who lives close to the Sparrows Point facility told us the Star of Bethlehem which sits atop the blast furnace will be removed and given to the local community prior to the destruction of the furnace.

As I mentioned above in the very first article – this could be a very interesting week in the flat rolled steel industry. This is not a week to ignore what is going on around you. If you have information regarding specific mill positions, status of orders out of any of the affected mills or other information you would like to share, I will be in the office all week. You can reach me by email at: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone at: 800-432-3475.

Also mentioned above – this week is the week steel mills will be negotiating with their scrap suppliers. The expectation is for scrap prices to move higher which, even before the USS situation, could have played well into another move higher by the domestic steel mills.

Our next Steel Market Update steel survey will begin on Tuesday morning of this week. I appreciate those of you who respond to our invitations to take our surveys. This will be an important week on many different levels.

For those of you who use “Rare Earths Minerals” such as Tungsten and Cobalt and would like to get material out of China – our iron ore and steel trading contact has access to these materials and is looking for customers in the United States. If you have interest please send me an email to: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com and I will link you to my trading contact.

Once again, SMU thanks you for your business which is truly appreciated.

John Packard, Publisher

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