Analysis of European Export vs. Domestic Hot Rolled Coil Prices

The following calculation is used by Steel Market Update to identify the spread between European and Chinese hot rolled export prices and domestic (US) hot rolled prices. We want our readers to note that we have made a decision to replace SteelBenchmarker as the primary data provider of world and Chinese hot rolled coil pricing. We were finding the comparison between Platts European (Ruhr) number to be much closer to the actual quotes we are seeing on HRC out of various trading companies than using the SteelBenchmarker “world export” number. We will continue to use SteelBenchmarker as a secondary number provider which will note further down in our articles about HRC price spreads.

Our new primary numbers for this exercise will be from Platts and we will compare European prices (Ruhr) and then Chinese prices. We want to make sure that our readers are aware that Chinese hot rolled is not available to the U.S. market so the Chinese spread is nothing more than an exercise of what if…