There have been some recent developments on the pig iron scene that are starting to reshape the import landscape as we round out 2026., SMU has learned. Here’s what the new import map is starting to look like in Ukraine, India, and Brazil. SMU spoke with sources commenting on each of these regions to find out the situation on the ground.
The results of the latest Steel Market Update (SMU) flat-rolled market survey are now available on our website to all premium members. After logging in, look under the Data tab for Market Reports, and there you will find the Flat-Rolled Survey Results section. Previous survey results are also available on that page. If you need help accessing these results, or if your company would like to have your voice heard in our future surveys, contact smu@crugroup.com.
Lead times for sheet and plate products continued to lengthen amid historically tight supply, according to the latest SMU steel market survey data. Average lead times now extend into January 2027, with some mills quoting availability well into February. Lead times for all sheet products except Galvalume stand at their highest point since the post-Covid demand snapback in 2021. Plate lead times exceed their 2021 peak, setting a record in our data series, which dates to 2018. (We started collecting sheet lead times earlier, in 2011.)
Ryerson Holding’s third-quarter sales and net income rose as shipments outperformed the company’s seasonal expectations. Management pointed to demand from data centers and power generation projects, gains in transactional business, and improving contract volumes, while describing demand across end markets as uneven. Chicago-based Ryerson’s latest earnings report released on Thursday shows third-quarter sales rose 8.6% sequentially to $2.18 billion. Shipments rose 1.2% despite the company's guidance for a seasonal decline. Net income attributable to Ryerson was $32 million, compared with $15.5 million in the second quarter. Compared with last year, sales were 87.5% higher and net income rose 316.2%.
The busy fall maintenance season isn’t over yet. Mill outages have rolled along since September, squeezing an already tight sheet market heading into November and beyond. Another round of scheduled maintenance is approaching, with outages still ahead at North Star BlueScope, ArcelorMittal Calvert, and Nucor Berkeley. Much of the fall maintenance calendar is now in the rearview mirror. September and October outages included U.S. Steel’s Gary Works; Nucor’s Hickman, Decatur, Gallatin and Crawfordsville operations; Steel Dynamics’ Sinton and Columbus mills; Cleveland-Cliffs’ Dearborn hot strip mill; NLMK Portage; and Big River Steel Works.
SunCoke Energy’s third-quarter revenue edged down to $485.9 million. Lower blast coke sales volumes and lower coal-price pass-throughs on long-term, take-or-pay agreements weighed on revenue. Higher terminals handling volumes and one additional month of Phoenix Global results partly offset the declines. Net income attributable to SunCoke was $21.8 million, compared with $22.2 million a year earlier. The Lisle, Ill.-based company expects 2026 consolidated adjusted EBITDA to modestly exceed the top of its $250 million to $265 million guidance range. Third-quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA rose $17.8 million year over year (y/y) to $76.9 million.
Nucor has been awarded an entire General Motors platform for exposed automotive sheet, Chair and CEO Leon Topalian said on a call Tuesday discussing the company’s third-quarter earnings. Topalian described the award as a breakthrough for Nucor in a product area he said integrated steelmakers had long dominated. Nucor plans to shift related process engineering and quality control work to its new West Virginia sheet mill as the facility ramps up, Topalian said. He said the mill would be capable of producing high-end automotive steel. Noah Hanners, executive VP of sheet products, said West Virginia automotive tons would begin customer qualifications in 2028.
The situation in Turkey for procuring ferrous scrap for its steel industry is facing some difficult times. As obsolescent scrap flows start to abate in Northern Europe and the US with the onset of the winter and the holiday season, the price of buying scrap for this period is trending upward. The domestic market in the US is expected to rise in November, possibly in December, and definitely in January as the US melt rate shows no signs of lessening. In Europe, the main problem is supply as the Turkish mills have leaned on this region heavily over the last two months rather than sourcing enough higher priced US cargoes. The European suppliers can only sell what is convenient at this point without an increase in price.
GrafTech International continues to expect modest growth in graphite electrode demand for the full year of 2026. The company reaffirmed its expectation of a 5-10% year-over-year increase in graphite electrode sales volume as it seeks to gain market share. “Overall, we continue to see improving trends across several of our key regions,” CEO Tim Flanagan said on a conference call Friday to discuss its third quarter results.
Reliance Inc. is keeping a close eye on inventory as extended lead times, elevated prices, and tight material availability complicate purchasing decisions. Executives at the Phoenix-based service center said on Thursday's third-quarter earnings call that inventory levels were appropriate. The company is reducing excess inventory and focusing on inventory turns. Chief Financial Officer Arthur Ajemyan said inventory turns improved 10% year over year.
"Now, the problem is no longer the price. The problem is having access to steel." That would have made a good lead. But I can’t take credit for it. Those (very quotable) words are from Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman and CEO Lourenco Goncalves during the steelmaker’s quarterly earnings conference call on Monday. For a while, I thought the shortages we'd been hearing about might be mostly a problem for small- and mid-sized buyers. But we’re seeing even some of the biggest steel buyers talking openly about supply problems.
The US Department of Commerce has reduced the anti-dumping duty on corrosion-resistant steel (CORE) for some Mexican producers after a court order. On remand from the Court of International Trade (CIT), Commerce agreed that the record did not show that Galvasid SA de CV’s US customers separately negotiated or paid freight or insurance. The agency therefore removed the adjustment and recalculated the margin. As a result, the agency lowered Galvasid’s coated steel dumping rate to 14.54%, from 24.05%. The all-others rate is now 14.29%, down from 17.42%. Ternium’s rate is unchanged at 14.17%.
Architecture firms reported weaker business conditions in September, according to the latest Architecture Billings Index (ABI) release from the American Institute of Architects and Deltek. The share of firms reporting declining billings was the largest since May. The September ABI fell two and a half points from August to a four-month low of 44.7. The ABI has been in contraction for all but two months since August 2022, indicating continually weakening business conditions following the post-pandemic rally. The ABI is a typical leading indicator of nonresidential construction activity, leading construction spending by approximately 9–12 months.
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.
Manufacturing activity improved in several Federal Reserve districts, but conditions remained mixed nationwide, according to the Fed’s Oct. 14 Beige Book report. Demand was strongest in steel, machinery, defense-related products, and data center infrastructure. Steel producers in the Cleveland District reported firm spot market demand. Data center, power-generation, defense, and aerospace projects supported orders. Long mill lead times kept customer inventories lean and prices high. Producers also reported higher orders from truck-trailer and light-vehicle manufacturers. International demand for hydrogen vehicle parts increased.
On the face of it, nothing much changed in the US steel market this week. Lead times continue to extend. Inventories remain lean. And mills can pretty much name their price. Sheet lead times, which extend well into December, remain at the highest levels we’ve seen since 2021. Plate lead times, meanwhile, set a new record. At 11 weeks on average, they’re higher than anything we’ve recorded – including during the boom year of ’21.
Lead times for sheet and plate continued to extend amid a domestic supply squeeze, according to the latest SMU steel market survey data. Average lead times stretch into mid- or late December, and those at some mills now extend into 2027. Lead times for all sheet products except Galvalume stand at their highest point since the post-covid demand snapback in 2021. Lead times for plate are now even higher than their 2021 peak.
Sheet buyers found mills slightly more negotiable on price this week, while plate buyers thought mills were less flexible on spot price tags, according to our latest survey data. Every two weeks, SMU surveys service center and manufacturer buyers to see whether mills will negotiate on new spot sheet and plate orders. In this week’s survey, 14% of respondents said mills were willing to talk price to secure an order, up three percentage points from two weeks earlier (Figure 1). This is the highest reading since July 8, when the rate stood at 18%.
The results of the latest Steel Market Update (SMU) flat-rolled market survey are now available on our website to all premium members. After logging in, look under the Data tab for Market Reports, and there you will find the Flat-Rolled Survey Results section. Previous survey results are also available on that page. If you need help accessing these results, or if your company would like to have your voice heard in our future surveys, contact smu@crugroup.com.
US service centers’ flat-rolled steel supply increased marginally in September, gaining ground for only the second time all year. Shipping days of supply rose to 45.9 last month, according to SMU data. That figure marks a 3.7% increase from August. September’s result represents a modest gain after inventories hit a five-year low the previous month. But it’s nearly 16% below September 2025 levels. Sheet inventories have averaged ~45 shipping days of supply over the past six months. Flat-rolled inventories represented 2.18 months of supply in September, up 3.7% from August. However, the figure was 15.5% below September 2025. The month-on-month (m/m) gain in inventories resulted from a boost (+21.2%) in intake that was partially offset by a 5% increase in shipments.
The spread between domestic hot-rolled (HR) coil and prime scrap prices widened for the 13th consecutive month in October, hitting another multi-year high. SMU’s hot-rolled (HR) coil price stands at $1,280 per short ton (st) on average this week, up $10/st from last week and a $40/st increase from a month earlier. Meanwhile, busheling averaged $480 per gross ton (gt) in October, rising $12.50/gt higher from September.
AZZ Inc. said galvanized flat-rolled steel availability remains a constraint for its Precoat Metals business, complicating customer sourcing and logistics. Customers are having difficulty securing substrate within required timeframes, and costs remain elevated, President and CEO Tom Ferguson said on an earnings conference call on Wednesday. He said AZZ is helping customers locate domestic and imported material and manage logistics. The situation has “definitely” affected the business, he added. “It’s tight. We see it every day, particularly galvanized sheet metal.”
Ferrous scrap prices rose in October as the market grew firmer, scrap sources said. “Overall, the main drivers of this October were strong US mill demand and order books, an export market that had risen over the course of September but has now pulled back slightly, and the season,” one source told SMU. He said at this time dealers and mills anticipate that scrap flows will begin to slow down moving into the end of the year.
AZZ Inc. raised its fiscal 2027 guidance after reporting record second-quarter sales and adjusted earnings, supported by higher volumes and pricing in both its Metal Coatings and Precoat Metals segments. AZZ reported fiscal second-quarter sales of $486.9 million for the three months ended Aug. 31, up 16.7% from the prior-year quarter. Net income fell 34.6% year over year (y/y) to $58.45 million. “During the quarter, we benefited from organic sales growth, the continued ramp-up of our new Washington, Missouri facility within our Precoat Metals segment, and the completion of a strategic Metal Coatings acquisition in the Pacific Northwest,” noted President and CEO Tom Ferguson.
US flat-rolled steel import licenses climbed in September, extending a recovery after several months of depressed inbound shipments. Licenses rose 4.9% month on month to 679,889 short tons (st), their highest level in 14 months and 29.1% above the 12-month moving average (12MMA) for August, according to Commerce Department data. The increase was led by cold-rolled sheet and other metallic-coated products, with particularly sharp gains in licenses from Turkey, Taiwan, and South Korea. Hot-rolled sheet licenses eased from August’s 19-month high, while galvanized sheet, coiled plate and cut-to-length plate also slipped month on month. Even so, licenses for hot-rolled sheet and both plate categories remained elevated relative to their recent averages, pointing to continued strength across several product lines.
US sheet and plate prices continued to march higher this week as a market squeeze that’s been in place for months now showed no signs of letting up. Market participants, some mostly focused on 2027 contract negotiations, said that it was increasingly difficult to even get a quote for spot tonnage from domestic mills, which firmly retain their grip on pricing power. SMU’s hot-rolled (HR) coil price stands at...