Steel Products Prices North America

Buyers Returning from the Holiday Ready to Place Orders
Written by John Packard
July 8, 2014
Steel buyers have returned from the 4th of July Holiday ready and willing to buy steel. Steel Market Update spoke with a number of commercial people at various steel mills who told us they were receiving an increasing amount of inquiries and orders. One of the conversion mills told us earlier today that their order book for August would be sold out within a week.
Buyers also appear to be less concerned about drifting flat rolled steel prices as we are seeing a flattening to slightly higher market than what we saw a couple of weeks ago.
The number of steel offers at the lower end of the pricing scale has dried up even though the low end of our range on hot rolled remains at $640 per ton. The number of sellers offering below $650 has shrunk over the past week and the mood is that prices have improved approximately $10 per ton.
One large hot rolled buyer told us, “The $640 number is gone with $650-$660 maybe. We have had to move part of our order book to Russian hot rolled in order to stay competitive.”
We heard from a galvanizing mill that they too have seen strong bookings over the past two weeks and that bookings continue to be good so far this week. They told us, “We saw pricing become firm in other areas last week as the bottom numbers in the market dried up and new competitor quotes migrated higher.”
A second conversion mill reported the market this week, “Pricing seems to have stopped falling and in some cases customers are getting off the fence and placing orders, but truly, for now, not enough orders to make up for the last few weeks of ugliness…” This mill went on to speak about the foreign imports which have been impacting their order book for a number of weeks, “The market needs a bit more confidence overall, or needs to come to grips with the likelihood that some of their import orders for fall will likely be cancelled if the dumping case comes about next week.” This mill believes there will be a flat rolled dumping suit should the domestic mills win the OCTG case when the final determination is announced late this week.
We did speak with one trading company who reported that their company had stopped placing flat rolled orders with China out of concern for a potential dumping suit. Other trading companies with whom SMU spoke this week reported that they continue to quote Chinese, Indian and Taiwanese steel and prices had not varied much from the low levels being reported a few weeks back. There are still $32.00/cwt-$33.00/cwt cold rolled offers out there from China (a little higher inland) and we heard of .012” G30 galvanized offers in the low $40’s the port (also from China and higher inland).
When asked about their position on selling steel from countries identified as potential targets of dumping suits should they be filed, one trading company told SMU, “We only have the option to keep selling steel until we are legally told to stop. Not sure what will or will not happen since there are a lot of rumors going around.”
The head of commercial for one mill told SMU earlier today, “We see the industry skipping over the summer slowdown and prices remaining tight right into October.”

John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Steel Products Prices North America
SMU Price Ranges: Sheet Rebounds – Sustainable Rally or Dead-Cat Bounce?
Sheet prices rose this week on the heels of a price increase announced by Cleveland-Cliffs last week that was quietly followed by other mills.

Plate Report: Mills Hold the Line Despite Slowing Demand
US plate prices have been relatively flat this year, especially when compared to sheet products. Case in point; SMU's plate prices stands at $1,455 per ton ($72.75 per cwt) on average, down 7% from a $1,560 per ton peak in April. Our HRC price is at $645 per ton, down 44% from an April peak of $1,160 per ton.

Nucor Maintains Plate Prices
Nucor Corp. will keep plate prices unchanged with the opening of its November order book.

Most Mills Still Willing To Negotiate Lower Sheet and Plate Prices: SMU Survey
The overall steel mill negotiation rate remained level this week vs. two weeks earlier, but plate’s rate fell by 15 percentage points, according to SMU’s most recent survey data.
SMU Price Ranges: Sheet Declines Moderate – Meaning or Noise?
Hot-rolled coil prices were down again this week, continuing a streak of week-over-week (WoW) declines that began in early/mid-July.