Steel Prices
Nucor Drops Plate Prices $140/ton on Import and Domestic Competition
Written by Michael Cowden
October 30, 2023
Nucor’s plate mill group (NPG) will cut prices for as-rolled discrete plate and normalized plate by $140 per ton ($7 per cwt).
The Charlotte, N.C.-based steelmaker said it would also drop prices for quenched-and-tempered plate by $80 per ton.
Nucor said the lower prices would be effective with new orders received on Wednesday, Oct. 31. The company also said the move was made in tandem with the opening of its plate mill order book for December.
“Due to higher levels of imported, higher-carbon emissions product and domestic participants lowering the transaction price, the NPG will be lowering the current published price,” Nucor said in a letter to customers dated Monday, Oct. 30.
The steelmaker did not specify which domestic competitors it was referring to.
On the import side, the US was licensed to bring in 53,880 metric tons of cut-to-length plate from abroad in October, according to Commerce Department figures.
License data for October are not yet complete. But that figure already represents an increase of 17% over the 46,128 tons imported in September.
Nucor did not specify which imports it might have been referring to. The largest sources of foreign plate in October so far have been South Korea (20,943 tons), Canada (11,302 tons), Germany (5,421 tons), and Romania (5,307 tons).
South Korea and Canada are typically among the largest sources of plate imported into the US. Germany had not shipped more than 1,000 tons of plate to the US since December 2021. Romania had not shipped significant quantities of plate to the US since November 2022.

Michael Cowden
Read more from Michael CowdenLatest in Steel Prices

CRU: Q3 will be the lowest point in current sheet price cycle
CRU Principal Analyst Shankhadeep Mukherjee expects a restocking cycle for steel sheet products in most parts of the world due to either low inventories or seasonally stronger demand.

HRC vs. busheling spread widens again in July
The price spread between prime scrap and hot-rolled coil widened marginally again in July.

HR Futures: Summertime blues
Coming out of the holiday market and long weekend, it seems the HRC futures market has caught some post-vacation blues.

S232 tariffs keep US HR prices below imports from EU
Hot-rolled (HR) coil prices in the US ticked down this week but have fluctuated little over the past month. Stateside tags continue to trail imports from Europe, supported by Section 232 steel tariffs that were doubled in early June.

Miller on Pig Iron: Brazilian tariffs threaten turmoil in sector
The announcement of 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports, including pig iron, could have a dramatic effect on steelmaking raw materials.