Steel Products Prices North America

Regional Imports Through October: Other Metallic Coated Sheet
Written by Peter Wright
December 13, 2019
Steel Market Update offers a comprehensive series of import reports ranging from the first look at licensed data to the very detailed look at volume by district of entry and source nation. The report you are reading now is designed to plug the gap between those two. National level import reports do a good job of measuring the overall market pressure caused by the imports of individual products. The downside is that there are huge regional differences. This report breaks total YTD import tonnage for each flat rolled product into regions and the growth/contraction for each region. Then it graphs the regional history of that product over a six-year period. We will report regional import data for each of six flat rolled products every other month.
This month, we are reporting through October. These six reports are intended to be reference documents with very few specific comments. The charts tell the whole story. Our intent is to provide buyers and sellers with an understanding of what is going on in their region of operation. Figure 1 shows the year-to-date tonnage into each region and the huge variation between them. Figure 1a presents the same data as a pie chart. By far the highest volume region in 2019 YTD October was the Gulf, which accounted for 46.2 percent of the total.
Year to date through October, total other metallic coated coil imports were down by 14.2 percent, but the Great Lakes was up by 108.8 percent and the Atlantic North by 72.5 percent. The Great Lakes tonnage has been increasing steadily for almost two years as the Gulf volume has declined.
Figure 2 shows the year-to-date change for each of seven regions and the change at the national level.
Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6 show the history of other metallic coated coil imports by region since March 2013 on a three-month moving average basis. Note, the Y axis scales are not the same.
Regions are compiled from the following districts (we will report on tonnage by district and source nation next month):
Atlantic North—Baltimore, Boston, New York, Ogdensburg, Philadelphia, Portland ME, St. Albans and Washington, D.C.
Atlantic South—Charleston, Charlotte, Miami, Norfolk and Savannah.
Great Lakes—Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Duluth, Great Falls, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Pembina.
Gulf—Houston, New Orleans, Mobile, San Juan, St. Louis and Tampa.
Pacific North—Anchorage, Columbia Snake, San Francisco and Seattle.
Pacific South—Los Angeles and San Diego.
Rio Grande Valley—Laredo and El Paso.

Peter Wright
Read more from Peter WrightLatest in Steel Products Prices North America

Nucor maintains plate prices, opens August order book
Nucor aims to keep plate prices flat again with the opening of its August order book.

Nucor CSP remains level at $900/ton
Nucor maintained its weekly list price for hot-rolled (HR) coil this week, following two consecutive increases.

Cliffs raises prices, seeks $950/ton for July spot HR
Cleveland-Cliffs plans to increase prices for hot-rolled (HR) coil to $950 per short ton (st) with the opening of its July spot order book. The Cleveland-based steelmaker said the price hike was effective immediately in a letter to customers dated Monday.

HRC vs. prime scrap spread widens in June
The price spread between HRC and prime scrap widened in June.

SMU price ranges: Steel prices rise in response to tariffs
Steel prices climbed for a second straight week across all five sheet and plate products tracked by SMU.