Final Thoughts

August 13, 2014

I got a note from a manufacturing company regarding the size of the Nucor move on galvanized coating extras. The comment that was made was, “Zinc average for 2014 is up 8.6% since average of 2012. Nucor increase is way too high.” This steel buyer went on to comment, “Aluminum average in same time period is only up about 2%.” We have not seen any coating extra changes for aluminized or Galvalume as of today.

In case you missed our comment in the OCTG article, the International Trade Commission (ITC) has announced they have changed the date of the final vote by the ITC commissioners to 11 AM on Friday, August 22nd. Normally, it takes until the next day before the ITA (International Trade Administration) publishes the final results of the vote. Peter Brebach explains the process in more detail in his article above.

Premium Level members – June imports by product, port and country are now available on our website.

I received a call this evening asking me to clarify a quote that was in our secondary steel article in our last issue. We had quoted a service center executive who told us, “Doing business over drinks doesn’t work anymore.” The quote came after a comment about potential changes between Severstal Dearborn and AK Steel and should have actually stood on its own as it was not directed at either mill (or any mill in particular). The service center executive and I were discussing how the internet has changed the way business is transacted and the quote was pointed at the old days when steel people went out for three martini lunches. My apologies to AK Steel and Severstal and anyone who may have interpreted the quote as being directed at any specific steel mill as it was not meant to be a negative comment.

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John Packard, Publisher