Overseas
March 30, 2017
Analysis of Foreign vs. Domestic Hot Rolled Coil Prices
Written by Brett Linton
The following calculation is used by Steel Market Update to identify the theoretical spread between foreign hot rolled steel export prices and domestic (USA) hot rolled coil prices. We want our readers to note that we have made a decision to replace SteelBenchmarker as the primary data provider of foreign hot rolled coil prices. We were finding the comparison between Platts European (Ruhr) number (as well as other Platts foreign export numbers) to be much closer to the actual quotes we are seeing on HRC out of various steel trading companies than using the SteelBenchmarker “world export” number we did previously. We will continue to use SteelBenchmarker as a secondary number provider which we will note further down in this article.
Our primary numbers for this exercise are from Platts, with a comparison of European HRC (FOB Ruhr), Turkey HRC export pricing (FOB Turkey), and Chinese HRC export prices (FOB Chinese port). Be 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…
