Analysis
January 9, 2025
Written by Ethan Bernard
We’ve been talking about Nippon Steel’s play for Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel a lot at SMU. Like, a whole lot. It has definitely been up there as the biggest issue of the past year.
From trade policy, to domestic blast furnace production, to iron ore, to the very landscape of the US industry, it ticks an awful lot of boxes. So in our most-recent SMU survey, we thought we’d do something unique: We’d kick the question off to you.
Sheet and plate prices continue to push higher as mills charge a premium for what little spot tonnage remains for 2026, market participants said. SMU’s price assessment for hot-rolled (HR) coil now stands at $1,290 per short ton (st) on average, up $10/st week over week. HR price gains averaged $5/st w/w throughout July and August, with no changes in prices some weeks and gains of at most $15/st w/w. In September and October to date, in contrast, prices have increased every week—with the average gain at $11.25/st w/w and w/w gains as high as $20/st. Prices for cold-rolled and coated products continued to increase as well. SMU's price assessment for cold-rolled (CR) coil clocked in at...
Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. expects to earn more from the repricing of contract tonnage than it previously projected. The Cleveland-based steelmaker raised its estimate for the earnings benefit of the repricing to about $850 million from about $500 million. The company also said negotiations for 2027 contracts are progressing better than expected. More than half of the 2027 renewal process was complete as of Cliffs' third-quarter earnings call on Monday morning.
Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. has rescheduled the planned reline of the C blast furnace at its Burns Harbor steel mill in northwest Indiana from mid-2027 to April 2028, company executives said. The delay allows the Cleveland-based steelmaker to keep the furnace, which has annual capacity of ~2.2 million short tons, operating while steel prices and demand remain favorable for mills, they said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Monday.
The pig iron trade from Brazil into the US has been lackluster over the last month with minimal activity. Many players in the trade thought activity would increase after the International Iron Metallics Assn (IIMA) meeting in Chicago earlier this month, but it has not materialized so far. Part of the reason could be the US scrap buy for October stretched out longer than usual, as buyers and sellers haggled over price. Now that prices settled upward, there may be different ideas on where pig iron prices should settle.
SMU’s Current Steel Buyers’ Sentiment Index ticked up this week, while Future Sentiment remained flat again, according to our latest market survey. Every two weeks, SMU polls thousands of steel-industry executives, asking them to rate their companies’ chances of success today and also three to six months down the road. We use their responses to calculate our proprietary Current and Future Steel Buyers’ Sentiment Indices, measures tracked since 2008.