Steel Products Prices North America

February Final Steel Imports Total 3.7 Million Tons

April 2, 2015

The U.S. Department of Commerce just released Final Census data regarding February 2015 total steel imports. The US DOC reported imports of foreign steel as being 3,711,541 net tons. What is interesting to us is the Final Census number is 127,975 tons more than what was presented as the Preliminary Census number on March 24th.

We have written about the challenges of making projections using license data. What we thought we would do this evening is to provide our readers a look back at the data compiled and where our numbers were focused each week. We have made the data “clickable” so it will expand in size so you can read the numbers. You may need to be logged into our website in order for the table to expand.

In the first few weeks of the February imports were trending well over 4.0 million tons for the month. It wasn’t until the final week of the month and then into early March before we got numbers suggesting February imports would be below 4.0 million tons and would come in closer to 3.8 million tons.

If we remember correctly, SMU has been forecasting imports to be in the 3.6-3.8 million ton range as we believe the early month numbers tend to be skewed to the high side.

In the table below we have listed out each week and how the license data for that point in time projected out to total tonnage for the entire month of February. As you can see the US DOC tweaks the numbers each and every week.