Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
May 19, 2014
It has been a very busy last 24 hours for Steel Market Update as we try to stay on top of all of the important news items, pricing, conduct our mid-May flat rolled market analysis and work on completing arrangements for our September Steel Conference.
We learned that US Steel Gary Works has all of their blast furnaces in operation. We also learned that USS Great Lakes is on schedule and steelmaking is coming back online. We inquired with ArcelorMittal regarding their C-5 blast furnace which, we were told last week, should be coming back online this week. To the best of our knowledge all of the other blast furnaces are, at this moment, operating. ArcelorMittal is expected to take their largest furnace at Indiana Harbor down at the beginning of June for close to two months. That appears to be the only major disruption in supply as far as furnaces are concerned. This too may change but that is what we know at this moment.
I mentioned our September Forecasting and Steel Summit in my opening paragraph. Steel Market Update is working very, very hard to produce an exceptional conference which we hope will be one of the highest quality conferences produced this year. We have expanded the length of the program from three-quarters of one day to two days. We are locating the conference right next to the Atlanta airport at the Georgia International Convention Center and the award winning Mariott located next door. Both are located on the first stop on the free light rail shuttle from the airport. Those living in the Southeast can also rest assured that the facility is easily accessible either by car or by using MARTA to go to the airport and then taking the “other” train to the GICC/Mariott.
I have mentioned a few of the speakers both in this newsletter (check the articles) and in previous articles. We will have more announcements about our program in the coming days.
We are already getting requests for registration and hotel information. We are working on getting the information online with our target date of June 1st to have everything ready for those interested in attending (which we hope is all of you). The dates to put aside are September 3 & 4t2014-05-20h…
A side note – on the bottom left hand side of our Home Page you will find a “poll” which anyone can participate in. No names needed. It is just a way to stay involved and you can find out how everyone who is taking the poll is voting by clicking on the “View” button. One vote within a 24 hour period. So go ahead and stack the deck and vote each and every day….
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!