Final Thoughts

My sources are telling me the electric arc furnace at JSW Ohio (former Mingo Junction) is almost ready to run. The company has been training and doing dry run testing, and I am being told they have enough crews to run 24 hours a day once the furnace comes back online. It appears the goal is to do their first melt next week. JSW expects to be rolling orders for December production. I was told that the pricing of hot rolled coming from their own melt would be much closer to the CRU number than what they have been selling their slab rollings for. I have been invited to visit the mill, which I intend to do once the EAF is up and they are producing hot rolled from scrap and pig iron and not just rolling slabs.

I did not pick up any $37.50/cwt hot rolled numbers this week. It appears the bottom end of the range is holding with the possible exceptions of slabs being rolled out of JSW and some of the trading company slab toll processing done out of AK Steel. The range seems to be tightening as steel buyers hold back to see what the mid-term election results will be; what will happen to tariffs on Mexico, Canada and Turkey; and whether their inventories are lining up with expectations.