Steel Products Prices North America
Comparison Price Indices: Flying High and Going Higher
Written by John Packard
May 1, 2016
Double digit flat rolled steel price moves seem to be a weekly occurrence over the past few weeks. Steel mills are controlling their flat rolled steel order books and restricting spot tons. Those buyers who did not recognize things were changing back in the fall when Steel Market Update began pointing out the changes in demand trends, service center inventories and Steel Buyers Sentiment, are probably having difficulties dealing with current market conditions. And yet, we still hear from some service centers that there are companies out there who don’t believe things have changed…
All of the steel indexes followed by Steel Market Update reported double digit gains for all flat rolled and plate products. SteelBenchmarket, which only produces prices twice per month, led the way with $50 or greater increases in hot rolled (+$50), cold rolled (+$53) and plate (+50) and they still lag SMU and Platts that report either weekly or daily.
For a moment during this past week, Steel Market Update and Platts were sitting at $530 per ton ($26.50/cwt) on benchmark hot rolled coil. By the end of the week Platts had taken their HRC index average to $540 per ton ($27.00/cwt) and we expect further movement higher in the coming days as buyers are telling SMU mill offers have reached the $600 per ton level.
The spread between the indexes is closer for cold rolled with SteelBenchmarker taking the more conservative position at $681 per ton with SMU ($695) and Platts ($710) leading the way.
SMU had galvanized up $15 and Galvalume up $20 on .060” G90 and .0142” AZ50, Grade 80 respectively.
Plate prices are also surging with Platts moving to $640 per ton up $40 and SteelBenchmarker moving up $50 to $613 per ton.
Hold on to your seats, prices will be moving higher from here…
FOB Points for each index:
SMU: Domestic Mill, East of the Rockies.
SteelBenchmarker: Domestic Mill, East of the Mississippi.
Platts: Northern Indiana Domestic Mill.
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Steel Products Prices North America
Plate Increase Announced, Will Flat Rolled be Next?
Flat rolled and plate steel prices have been on the rise and are expected to continue climbing in the coming weeks. Yesterday, Nucor announced a new $50 per ton ($2.50/cwt) base price increase on plate. Steel Market Update anticipates flat rolled sheet prices will soon follow. With the latest Nucor announcement on plate the total […]
SMU Price Ranges & Indices: Market Prices are Strong
Steel prices continue their march higher, and we are seeing a very strong market on hot rolled coil right now. With the strength of HRC, we are seeing a return to more normal price spreads between hot rolled, cold rolled and coated base pricing. Prices appear to be heading to even loftier levels with steel […]
U.S Raw Steel Production Sees Small Dip
U.S. raw steel production for the week ending Feb. 10 totaled 1,737,000 net tons, a 1.9 percent decrease from the same period last year, and down 0.6 percent from the prior week. The mill capability utilization rate for the week averaged 74.5 percent, down from 75.0 percent the prior week, reports the American Iron and […]
February Foreign Steel Imports Trending Toward Lowest Level in Years
The U.S. Department of Commerce released license data through the first 13 days of February that “suggests” foreign steel imports could be at the lowest levels seens in many years. The trend is for imports to barely exceed 2 million net tons, almost one-third lower than the 3 million tons that were reported for January. […]
Sheet and Plate Imports by District of Entry and Source-December 2017
This analysis breaks down the imported tonnage of six flat rolled products into the district of entry and the source country. We believe that misinformation (or lack of) about regional import volumes are often used to influence purchase decisions. Our intent with this analysis is to describe in detail what is going on in a […]