Final Thoughts
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Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
March 10, 2017
The scrap market created a lot of buzz over the past two months that resulted in, so far, two domestic steel mill price increases totaling $60 per ton ($3.00/cwt). I got a note over the weekend from one of the national companies who told me about the scrap markets, “There is a sense the market is overextended at this point, especially on prime grades. I’m not sure we’ll necessarily see a significant pullback in April given ore-based metallics prices and robust demand, but a pause and/or slight pullback would not be surprising.”
The scrap markets ended up as follows:
HMS (heavy melt) = $275-$290 per gross ton
Shredded scrap = $315-$330 per gross ton
Prime grades (busheling) = $390-$415 per gross ton
Pig iron has limited availability at $380-$395 per metric ton, New Orleans (NOLA).
At the FMA Conference in New Orleans last week I asked SMA President, Philip Bell about the high tonnage of cold rolled and coated products still coming into the United States. He responded to my question and part of his answer referenced the amount of money the domestic mills are making on those two products as a reason why he did not believe there would be any more trade cases filed. Philip Bell will be participating in our 7th SMU Steel Summit Conference on August 28-30, 2017.
A note about our Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop. We are sold out for our April 11-12, 2017 workshop in Toledo, OH and we have a wait list building. The workshop coming up after Toledo will be in Fontana (Los Angeles), California and our tour will be of the California Steel Industries steel mill. We will advise the exact dates as we are working on hotels right now but we are aiming for late June to no later than mid-July 2017. We hope to have all the details on our website by the end of this week. If you have any questions feel free to contact us at: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
I will have more regarding a couple of the presentations from last week’s FMA/ASD Conference later this week. I am waiting for the Power Point presentations from a couple of the speakers.
I will be in the office all week this week and I can be reached at: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com or 800-432-3475.
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
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John Packard
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Final thoughts
SMU has heard from some larger buyers who have stepped back into the market to buy at prices that, if not at a bottom, they assess to be close to one. Is it enough to stretch out lead times and send prices upward again? Or do we continue to scrape along the mid-$600s per short ton (st) as we have been doing for most of the last month?
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Final thoughts
Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves had some insightful things to say today about the steel market and about a conference we suspect might be Steel Summit.
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Final thoughts
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, when you add in some commentary from respected peers in the steel industry to those pictures, that may shoot you up to five thousand words, at least. In that spirit, we’ve added some snapshots from our market survey this week, along with some comments from market participants.
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Final thoughts
I thought we’d have more clarity this week on Section 232, Mexico, and a potential carve-out for steel melted and poured in Brazil. As of right now, the only official comment I have is from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).
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Final thoughts
There are just 40 days left until the 2024 SMU Steel Summit gets underway on Aug. 26 at the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC) in Atlanta. And I’m pleased to announce that it's official now: More than 1,000 people have registered to at attend! Another big development: The desktop version of the networking app for the event has officially launched!