Steel Products Prices North America
ArcelorMittal Defines Base Price Levels for Steel Industry
Written by John Packard
November 2, 2014
ArcelorMittal defined the flat rolled steel price increases announced earlier last week. In their announcement AM USA management did not announce a $20 per ton increase but rather specific minimum base prices for their sales people. In the process, AM has also made a statement as to where they feel base prices on flat rolled steel should be for the industry.
ArcelorMittal advised their customers via email that the new hot rolled base is $33.00/cwt ($660 per ton) and $39.00/cwt base ($780 per ton) on cold rolled and coated.
With CRU and Platts at $640 hot rolled (essentially unchanged from the week prior to the announcements being made) the new ArcelorMittal spot hot rolled price equates to a $20 per ton increase (+$30 over SMU hot rolled average which this past week was $630 per ton).
Most buyers believe the increases being announced are typical for this time of year but, are not being strongly sold by the domestic mills at this point in the process.
Steel Market Update has adjusted our Price Momentum Indicator to Neutral from Lower late last week once we saw at least three mills as having made the price move. Not all mills have announced and it is still a question in most buyers minds if the mills will be able to collect this increase.
SMU will conduct our next flat rolled steel market survey beginning on Monday of this week. We will pose questions about the recent price increase and report on the results in Thursday evening’s newsletter. We will provide our Premium level members a Power Point presentation on the survey results on Friday of this week.
John Packard
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