Final Thoughts

I reviewed the Steel Dynamics lead time sheet provided to steel buyers on April 2, 2019. Hot rolled out of Butler is being quoted as the week of 4/29 (4 weeks), while Columbus lead time on the exact same product is 5/27 (8 weeks). Eight weeks is an extremely long lead time for HRC, especially for an electric arc furnace mill.

Cold rolled out of SDI Butler is on an inquire basis, while Columbus was quoting the week of 5/20 (7 weeks). One thing to remember about SDI Butler, they have always had shorter-than-normal lead times and they control the opening and closing of the month much more than any other flat rolled mill east of the Rocky Mountains.

Galvanized lead times are “inquire” at Columbus and Butler, while The Techs were reporting lead times of 6-7 weeks. SDI Heartland (the former CSN Terre Haute mill) has the shortest lead times at 5 weeks. When looking at the lead times at The Techs and Heartland, you need to know that these mills are re-rollers or conversion mills and use full hard cold rolled (The Techs) or hot rolled (Heartland) substrate. I have to assume that much of the substrate is coming from either Butler or Columbus.

To provide a little more depth to my review of lead times I also took a look at the Nucor Berkeley lead time sheet provided to their customers also on April 2. Hot rolled out of Berkeley is based on width with widths 48”-54” being the shortest at 2-3 weeks (week ending April 20), widths 55”-68” were one week longer and widths under 48” were two weeks longer.

Nucur Berkeley cold rolled fully processed lead times were running 3 weeks to 4 weeks depending on width (longer if tension levelled).

Berkeley galvanized lead times were all being referenced as “inquire,” suggesting a strong order book on coated products.

So, looking at two minimills we are seeing lead times all over the board. Benchmark hot rolled being as short as 2-3 weeks out of Nucor Berkeley and as long as 8 weeks out of SDI Columbus.

Obviously, the customer base, as well as any potential maintenance projects, need to be reviewed to get a full view of how busy each mill is.

Lead times, demand, sentiment and other factors influence our SMU Price Momentum Indicator, which we are reviewing right now to see if the “Higher” directional we have on all flat rolled products needs to be adjusted. Watch our website and look for more on that subject in Tuesday evening’s issue of Steel Market Update.

By the way, if there are any terms that you did not understand (conversion, re-roller, minimill, electric arc furnace, etc.) or if you are not familiar with the steelmaking and rolling process and you would like to learn more, I highly recommend our Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop. The next workshop will be held in Davenport, Iowa, on May 14-15 and we have plenty of seats still available. You can go to www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/Events/Steel101 for more details, costs and how to register. You are also welcome to contact us at info@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone at 770-299-9897.

We are closing in on 300 registrations for the 2019 SMU Steel Summit Conference and we still have 141 days (just shy of five months) to go. We are ahead of last year’s pace when we ultimately had 912 attendees. Our expectation is we will have 1,000+ executives from manufacturing, steel distribution, fabrication, toll processing, steel mills, trading companies and suppliers to those industries. Here are some of the companies that registered late last week (those with an * registered multiple people): NCI Building Systems, Hyundai Steel USA*, ThyssenKrupp Steel North America, Samuel*, Kloeckner, Precoat Metals, Metal Master* and Plant Tuff. If you would like to register for the 2019 SMU Steel Summit Conference, please click here.

We don’t sit on our laurels as we strive to make each and every SMU Steel Summit Conference better and more productive for our attendees. We have an exceptional program and speakers. For those of you who have not looked at our website in a while, we recently updated the program and the speakers on the site: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/Events/Steel-Summit

The SMU Conference App has been upgraded, and we will do an extended portion of the program utilizing the SMU App. Look for us to use the results of our polling and perhaps some real-time reaction with certain speakers or panels. Our goal is to keep you engaged.

Part of being engaged and maybe one of the main reasons to attend an SMU Steel Summit Conference is the networking. There will be decision makers from over 400 companies – Presidents & CEO’s, Directors of Purchasing & Sales and their teams, CFO’s and logistics officers, processing managers and much more. We also have a strong group of exhibitors at this year’s event with whom you can interact and learn more about how their company and its products can impact your business. The CRU Group (our parent company) put together an excellent brochure on our conference. I highly recommend that you review it, which you can do by clicking here.

I believe we may be sold out of sponsor spots and I believe we have three exhibitor spots remaining. If you have interest in becoming a sponsor or exhibitor, please contact Jill Waldman at Jill@SteelMarketUpdate.com

I encourage our existing member companies, as well as any company that is interested in becoming a subscriber to Steel Market Update, to contact Paige Mayhair. We have new pricing packages in place, which are extremely attractive to any company that wants to share our newsletter with multiple employees. We have packages that allow you to share our newsletter with an unlimited number of employees both here in North America as well as globally. To contact SMU Sales: Paige@SteelMarketUpdate.com or 724-720-1012.

If you are new to SMU and have any questions about the newsletter, website or would like to make suggestions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at info@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone at 770-299-9897.

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

John Packard, President & CEO