Steel Mills
Market Chatter About the SDI Sinton Outage
Written by Becca Moczygemba
July 11, 2023
Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI) last week announced a two- to four-week outage on the hot mill at its Sinton, Texas, flat-rolled mill.
The company said on Friday, July 7, that the unplanned outage resulted from “caster shear equipment issues” that occurred on July 1, but that it will continue to operate the cold mill and coating lines.
Steel Market Update has heard from several readers who have already been or will be affected by the outage. While we don’t know for sure how many tons are being temporarily displaced, sources have said the steelmaker is moving some tonnage to other SDI locations to fulfill orders.
We polled steel buyers this week, asking if they think the outage will impact the US sheet market. Here’s what some of you had to say about the downtime:
“It shouldn’t affect us because demand seems a bit sluggish.”
“I think the effects will be minimal, but it may keep the other SDI mills out of the spot market for a couple of weeks.”
“If the outage is only for two weeks no, but four weeks may keep pricing higher due to demand. Currently supply is good.”
“With light demand, I don’t believe this will impact us at all.”
“Most businesses are placing orders out longer, past listed lead times from mills to compensate for any disruptions. Lesson learned from COVID experience.”
“We won’t be affected, there’s plenty of steel available elsewhere.”
“Short term it will provide optics for the market to stabilize prices.”
“Other mills might take advantage of the outage in order to raise prices.”
“Most of our material was moved from Sinton to another SDI mill.”
By Becca Moczygemba, becca@steelmarketupdate.com
Becca Moczygemba
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