Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
June 28, 2018
I am in London attending meetings with our new parent company, the CRU Group. I have been very impressed at the depth of the work being done by the CRU team. I will be sharing more about the CRU Group in the days and weeks ahead.
I do want to stress to those of you who are concerned, the focus of the Steel Market Update newsletters, workshops and conference will not change. We are already working very hard with CRU to expand and improve on existing SMU products, and we will continue to work on some of the ideas and proprietary products that SMU has under development.
This is my first trip to London and the city is busy and charming. We arrived yesterday (Wednesday) and when we went to dinner last night one of the differences between the U.S. and England was made apparent. There was absolutely no one in the restaurant on their cell phone (well, there was one – me). At dinner at a 400-year-old pub this evening, we saw the same thing. No one was on their cell phone. They were enjoying dinner and conversation with family and friends. A novel idea….
A note about our publication schedule after today (Thursday). On Friday, we will publish a Premium issue for our Premium members. On Sunday, we will publish our normal Executive level newsletter. On Tuesday, July 3, we will not publish due to the Fourth of July Holiday. We wish all of our U.S. members a good holiday with their family and friends. We will go back to our normal publication schedule on Thursday, July 5, including publication of our price indices for the week.
We are approaching 700 registered for this year’s SMU Steel Summit Conference. We fully expect we will reach or exceed our goal of 800 registrations, which would be a record for an SMU Steel Summit Conference by 150 executives. The companies that have registered in the past few days include: Worthington Industries, MISA, Lapham-Hickey Steel, Majestic Steel, Quality Edge, CSN, Ryerson and Manchester Tank. We are over 300 companies and we know there are 266 registrations of people who have never attended an SMU conference before. This is THE steel conference to see and to be seen. If you want the best networking experience along with the best program, the SMU Steel Summit Conference is the place to be. Dates are Aug. 27-29, 2018. Location is the Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta. For more information and registration details, go to: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/events/steel-summit
We fully anticipate that one of our key employees, Brett Linton, will become a father for the first time sometime between now and Sunday. We wish Tara and Brett a safe delivery of a beautiful healthy baby girl. The SMU Family is growing…
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, President & CEO
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?
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.
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.
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).
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!