Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
May 8, 2015
Last week was a very busy week, not only for the steel mills and their customers as they try to determine exactly where steel prices are going to go from here, but also for Steel Market Update. We produced our early May flat rolled steel market analysis (survey) and posted the results online for our Premium level members. We also posted our flat rolled steel imports by product, port and country analysis online as well.
We began taking registrations for our 5th Steel Summit Conference and we are pleased with the early interest. I want to thank Magic Coil Products as our first confirmed sponsor and we continue to work with a number of companies who have expressed interest in helping us keep the price of our conference reasonable while at the same time improving the quality of the program. We still have some surprises in store – so, I would highly recommend that you make plans to join us in Atlanta on August 31st (networking and registration), September 1st (we have a great pre-summit agenda with the conference beginning shortly after 9 AM) and September 2nd. Many of the speakers, the program and registration are now available on our website or you can contact our office: 800-432-3475 and we will gladly help you.
I got a call recently from the head of commercial for one of the steel mills. They were already an Executive level member but wanted to trial the Premium product to see if it was worth the extra money. The purpose of the call was to congratulate us for the work we were doing with the Premium product which this individual upgraded to. We will gladly give any existing Executive level member an upgrade to Premium if you would like to learn more about what it is and what it entails. I am in the office most of this week and can be reached at: 800-432-3475.
Our Chicago area Steel 101 workshop is the week after next. We have a great group and I look forward to seeing everyone at the town I seem to have difficulty spelling: Merrillville, Indiana (just outside of Chicago). The next one will be in Iowa and will include a tour of the SSAB plate mini-mill.
Ray Culley and I will be at the Boy Scout Dinner hosted by the Metals Industry at the Hyatt in Chicago on Thursday evening of this week. I look forward to seeing many of our customers and potential customers in one room and one time.
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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Even before the news about Mexico, I didn’t want to overstate the magnitude of the change in momentum. As far as we could tell, there hadn’t been a frenzy of new ordering following President Trump’s announcement of 50% Section 232 tariffs. But higher tariffs had unquestionably raised prices for imports, which typically provide the floor for domestic pricing. We’d heard, for example, that prices below $800 per short ton for hot-rolled (HR) coil were gone from the domestic market – even for larger buyers.