Final Thoughts

September 29, 2017

I am in Chicago and will be here until Tuesday when I make my way to Fort Wayne, Ind., to conduct one of our Steel 101 workshops. A special thank you to SDI and Paragon Steel for allowing our workshop to tour each of their plants. This workshop has been sold out for a number of weeks.

Our next Steel 101 workshop, which is now open for registrations, will be held Jan. 24-25, 2018, in Mobile, Ala. We will be touring the SSAB Mobile minimill. You can find more information about this workshop on our website.

I am going to take a personal liberty here for a moment. When I first started in the steel business, I worked for a company in Skokie, Ill., called Rolled Steel Corporation. As a junior salesperson, I sat in a large office with about 20 other junior and senior salespeople. Another junior salesperson named Mike Dunn sat behind me. It was from Mike I learned what a “nudge” was…. Mike passed away on Friday evening with his family by his side. My thoughts and prayers are with Mike, his wife Beth and his children and grandchildren.

I will be working with the service centers who are involved with our inventory “flash” report early this week and with the larger group of distributors who are working with us on our new Service Center Inventories Index (flat rolled). We hope to get our index published on or about the 10th of each month.

On Monday morning at 8 AM, we will begin canvassing manufacturers, service centers, steel mills, trading companies and toll processors about various trends (pricing, demand, service center spot, imports, etc.). If you receive an invitation, please take a few moments to answer the first question (shown in the invite), which will then take you to the rest of the questionnaire.

As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.

John Packard, Publisher