Steel Products Prices North America

Comparison Price Indices: Yet Another Mixed Week

May 6, 2018

Flat rolled steel prices continued their mixed ways for about the fourth week in a row. Steel Market Update and Platts both saw benchmark hot rolled as up slightly and the two indexes are now $1 per ton apart in their assessment of the HRC market average. SteelBenchmarker did not report prices this past week.

Cold rolled was flat on our index while Platts took their number down $3 per ton. Steel Market Update saw CRC average as being $1015 per ton while Platts was $5 higher at $1020 per ton.

Galvanized prices were seen as being slightly higher than one week ago with Platts at $1114 per ton and SMU at $1101 per ton for .060” G90 GI.

SMU had Galvalume as being unchanged at $1,321 per ton for .0142” AZ50, Grade 80.

SMU had plate prices as down $15 while Platts saw plate rising $7 per ton. Due to allocation and controlled order entry this does not concern us as we anticipate plate prices will rise over the next 30 days.

SMU Note: Galvanized prices include $86 in extras for a .060″ G90 product. Galvalume prices include $291 in extras for a .0142” AZ50 Grade 80 product.

FOB points for each index:

SMU: Domestic Mill, East of the Rockies.
SteelBenchmarker: Domestic Mill, East of the Mississippi.
Platts: Northern Indiana Domestic Mill.

Plate price FOB points are different for each of the indexes:

SMU: FOB Delivered to the Customer (includes freight)
Platts: FOB Midwest Mill (includes freight)

Note that SteelBenchmarker produces numbers twice per month. On the weeks they produce numbers, we will include them in the average. The weeks where they do not produce numbers (NA = not available) we will not include their outdated numbers in the CPI average.