Steel Products Prices North America

Nucor, BRS Increase Galvanized Extras Due to High Zinc Prices

December 5, 2021

Late last week both Nucor and Big River Steel notified customers of an upward revision to their galvanized steel coating extras.

A letter from Nucor stated, “Consistent with our practice to monitor the cost of zinc, we have revised our galvanized coating weight extras effective with orders acknowledged for the week ending Jan. 8, 2022.”

Prior to this change, NLMK revised their galvanized coating extras in early-November, with new prices going into effect on Jan. 1, 2022.

Zinc spot prices had spiked in mid-October, reaching a record $1.74 per pound, according to Kitco. Prices have eased since and are now hovering around $1.50 per pound. Recall that zinc spot prices reached a multi-year low back in March 2020 at $0.82 per pound.

SMU has done an analysis on the old and new extras, provided below. Select Nucor extras increased between 9-25%, with an average increase of 14% across the weights in the below table. Click here and select the ‘Sheet’ tab to see the latest extras by mill on the Nucor website.

Select Big River Steel extras increased between 17-36%, up an average of 29% for the below items. Note that the previous BRS extras went into effective in October 2020, so roughly 15 months between their revisions. The new Nucor extras are compared to February 2021 extras, 11 months between revisions. The new extras between the mills are almost identical.

By Brett Linton, Brett@SteelMarketUpdate.com

Brett Linton

Brett Linton is a digital operations analyst for Steel Market Update, where he began his career. Linton has been in the steel industry since 2010. He has held roles as a category manager and strategic insights director at Reibus before returning to SMU in 2024. He is a graduate of The University of North Georgia with a degree in Finance and Accounting. Brett can be reached at brett@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-314-0179.