Final Thoughts

We are entertaining adding to the depth of our coverage of the ferrous scrap markets both domestically and internationally. In tonight’s issue is a short article on the ferrous scrap markets written by Philip Hoffman, Chairman and CEO of Hoffman Iron & Steel. For more information about Philip Hoffman please use the following link to go to a Recycling Today article which provides a detailed look at Philip’s background. If you enjoyed the article and would like to read more: please let me know. You can reach me by email at: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone at 800-432-3475.

When the Chinese began selling cold rolled at prices well under the market SMU pointed it out to our readers. We have been recently pointing at what are probably the replacement countries at the low end of the pricing scale. One, Vietnam, doesn’t actually produce that much steel. So when we reported the license data for Vietnam for the month of December we received the following comment/questions from a trading company:

“[I] Really appreciate your newsletter but I need to question the amount of CR from Vietnam.  Just cannot be correct.  At this point Vietnam CR is limited.  These are orders that would have been placed a few months ago and I am not aware of heavy CR offers or actual orders being placed.  A couple of Vietnamese mills have been pushing hard for GALV but not CR.  I imagine someone may have entered 30,000 tons when they actually meant only 3,000 tons or 300 tons or entered 40,000 tons instead of 400 tons.  Just doesn’t make sense.  If that amount of tons do arrive the only explanation is that the Chinese are producing and calling the origin as Vietnam.  Chinese ships to Vietnam and reload from a Vietnamese port to USA.”

We will be looking into this and I know from a conversation with at least one domestic mill so will their attorneys…

Speaking of trade suits… The government has advised SMU that the hot rolled countervailing duty preliminary determination will be announced tomorrow. We will post an article as soon as we get the results for our members to read. It will be in the scrolling menu of articles on our home page. On Tuesday it will be published, along with feedback we receive from the industry, in our Tuesday evening issue of SMU.

i want to welcome our newest SMU member companies and I want to remind everyone that we encourage interaction between our members and those of us at SMU. If you have an idea for an article, suggestion or question about any of our content or potential content please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We can be reached at info@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone at 800-432-3475.

As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.

John Packard, Publisher