Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
May 14, 2014
SMU sources advised us on Wednesday that the steelmaking operations at U.S. Steel Great Lakes (Ecorse) in Michigan had begun. This afternoon, US Steel confirmed that the start-up process was underway with no further elaboration or comment. We anticipate that the mill will begin making prime steel within a few days to a week.
Our newest workshop – Managing Price Risk II: Strategies & Execution will be held in Chicago on June 24 & 25, 2014. More details can be found in the Events section of our website or just click on the link provided.
We will check on the ArcelorMittal C-5 blast furnace which went down late last week at Cleveland Works. We have been led to believe that the furnace will be back up sometime next week and that the company will not lose any orders due to the outage.
A note that I will be in New York City during the Steel Success Strategies conference. I will be attending the Platts conference on Monday and the Bank of America Merrill Lynch dinner that same evening. If you would like to meet with me during the conference please send me an email: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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Final thoughts
SMU has heard from some larger buyers who have stepped back into the market to buy at prices that, if not at a bottom, they assess to be close to one. Is it enough to stretch out lead times and send prices upward again? Or do we continue to scrape along the mid-$600s per short ton (st) as we have been doing for most of the last month?
Final thoughts
Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves had some insightful things to say today about the steel market and about a conference we suspect might be Steel Summit.
Final thoughts
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, when you add in some commentary from respected peers in the steel industry to those pictures, that may shoot you up to five thousand words, at least. In that spirit, we’ve added some snapshots from our market survey this week, along with some comments from market participants.
Final thoughts
I thought we’d have more clarity this week on Section 232, Mexico, and a potential carve-out for steel melted and poured in Brazil. As of right now, the only official comment I have is from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).
Final thoughts
There are just 40 days left until the 2024 SMU Steel Summit gets underway on Aug. 26 at the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC) in Atlanta. And I’m pleased to announce that it's official now: More than 1,000 people have registered to at attend! Another big development: The desktop version of the networking app for the event has officially launched!