Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
February 17, 2017
As mentioned in an earlier article, steel buyers need to be aware of the potential for a new round of price increase announcements out of the domestic mills. The drop in scrap prices in the first few days of February followed by a sharp rise between now and then have the mills a bit on edge. They now believe scrap prices could jump again in March which would put pressure on their margins. Whether any new price increase will stick is another question entirely. We have a couple of new players looking for hot rolled orders and cold rolled and coated trial orders (Big River Steel and Acero Junction).
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We received this from one of our customers late last week and Mr. Singh agreed to allow us to share his thoughts about Steel Market Update, “My name is Deep Singh and I am the steel global commodity manager for Johnson Controls. A lot of what I do is read up on the global steel industry, track costs and trends on various drivers, and review global economics. We have found that SMU is an excellent source for data and information.”
We hope to see Mr. Singh at our SMU Steel Summit Conference later this year as he has advised that he is interested in attending.
A short note about our next Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop which will be held in Toledo, Ohio on April 11-12, 2017 and will tour the North Star BlueScope steel mill. The workshop is about two thirds full. We do have space for more people. If you are interested you can find more information on our website or you are welcome to contact one of our offices: 800-432-3475 or 706-216-2140.
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Sincerely,
John Packard, Publisher

John Packard
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