On October 28, 2014 AK Steel announced a $20 per ton ($1.00/cwt) price increase on hot rolled, cold rolled and galvanized steels. Shortly after, ArcelorMittal and then Nucor advised their customers of specific base price levels on new spot flat rolled orders. Hot rolled was to be offered at $33.00/cwt ($660 per ton or higher) […]
Production in October on a tons per day basis was 4.411 million tons, down from 4.485 in September. This was the fourth month since February when production was <4.5 million metric tons per day. October had one more production day than September and the month’s total increased from 134.562 million to 136.838. Since January 2008 […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) is seeing flat rolled steel prices as drifting at this time. We saw slight adjustments in both the upper and lower end of our range on hot rolled compressing our range. Cold rolled was up by $5 per ton while galvanized was unchanged and Galvalume was lower. Market players are sitting […]
Vessels carrying iron ore, metallurgical coal, aggregate and grain continue to work under the force majeure created when ice conditions at the start of the shipping season ended up costing the shipping companies 40 days of lost transit time. At the beginning of the season ice conditions were beyond the Coast Guard’s ice breaking capabilities. […]
Spot prices for 62% Fe iron ore fines, CFR Tianjin Port in China were reported by The Steel Index this morning as being down 4 percent to $72.10/dry metric ton. This is down 4 percent in one day and is, based on TSI records, the lowest we have seen since SMU began tracking iron ore […]
The Wyoming Business Council and JR Simplot Company are hoping to revive a shuttered iron ore mine and build a $500 million iron ore concentrator and pig iron production facility in central Wyoming. The plant would produce cast pigs with a carbon content of 3.5 percent made from low grade taconite ore with an iron […]
For the week ending November 15, 2014, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,854,000 net tons (NT) of raw steel, a 0.8 percent increase over the previous week and a 1.5 percent increase over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 77.1 […]
Late last week Steel Market Update (SMU) adjusted our galvanized range to take into consideration the growing number of base prices reaching down to the $35.00/cwt level. Our galvanized range is now $35.00/cwt-$38.00/cwt for new spot orders. Over the weekend we adjusted our hot rolled range to reflect the lower numbers we have been collecting […]
The House of Representatives passed legislation approving construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The project has been delayed for more than five years while seeking presidential approval for the line to cross the U.S./Canada border. The House voted 252-161-1 in support of the pipeline. The Senate will vote on Tuesday and will need 60 votes […]
The following article on the hot rolled futures market comes to SMU from contributing writer Bradley Clark, Director of Steel Trading for Kataman Metals. Over the past couple of weeks the HRC futures market has traded within a narrow range reflecting mixed sentiment among market participants. There seems to be a divergence of opinion regarding […]
This week Steel Market Update is going to do something different with the import license data which has been released by the U.S. Department of Commerce through November 12th. Instead of us providing a projected total for the month of November, we thought it might be more worthwhile to compare the daily license average through […]
Steel Market Update is revising our galvanized and Galvalume price ranges and averages to accommodate new information that we have been gathering this week. A number of steel buyers and at least one steel mill advised us that the low end of our ranges on these two products were not representative of the deals being […]
The following is a “hypothetical” calculation of the spread between world hot rolled export prices and domestic (USA) hot rolled prices. SMU compares the world hot rolled export price with hypothetical adders for freight, handling, trader margin, etc. This is then compared to the spot (FOB Mill) domestic hot rolled price using the SMU Hot […]
One of the topic of conversations during the Cowen & Company Global Metals, Mining & Materials Conference was the issue of scrap prices versus iron ore and the value of iron “units.” On the first day of the conference, Dan DiMicco former CEO of Nucor, told the audience that iron ore and scrap would come […]
Apparent supply, a proxy for market demand is defined as domestic mill shipments to domestic locations plus imports. Sources are the American Iron and Steel Institute and the US Department of Commerce with analysis by SMU. The three month moving average (3MMA) of the total tonnage of sheet and strip supply in the period July […]
Licensed data for October was updated on November 4th through the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Department of Commerce. The SMU publishes several import reports ranging from this very early look using licensed data to the very detailed analysis of final volumes by district of entry and source nation which is published in […]
We have been getting mixed messages from steel buyers this week regarding the status of the increase announcements and spot flat rolled steel prices. A number of buyers are reporting the mills as pushing the new numbers while others are reporting prices as remaining the same as they were one week ago. One thing that […]
For the week ending November 8, 2014, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,839,000 net tons (NT) of raw steel, a 1.3 percent increase over the previous week and a 0.7 percent increase over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 76.5 […]
Prior to the beginning of the month most scrap dealers were resigned to the fact that ferrous scrap prices would decline by $20 per gross ton and, in some remote areas, perhaps as much as $30. By the end of this past week the dust had settled and scrap prices had dropped by a minimum […]
Flat rolled steel prices began to stabilize this past week after having peaked in the middle of August at $675 per ton (hot rolled) and then slowly sliding to a low of $630 per ton during the week ending November 1, 2014. The SMU HRC average actually rose slightly to $635 per ton this past […]
Apparent steel supply for September was 10,305,707 net tons, the third biggest month since the beginning of the Great Recession. Apparent steel supply is calculated by adding domestic shipments and finished US imports and subtracting total US exports. Note that our Premium member analysis breaks down apparent steel supply by flat and long products. September […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced today the initiation of antidumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) investigations on imports of welded line pipe from South Korea and Turkey. The information below is quoted from the text of the International Trade Administration press release: The merchandise covered by these investigations is circular welded carbon and alloy steel […]
We thought our readers might be interested in reading what the AISI reported regarding foreign steel imports for the month of October. Washington, D.C. – Based on the Commerce Department’s most recent Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) data, the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) reported today that steel import permit applications for the […]
In the AISI press release, which we have republished in this evening’s newsletter, they reported October finished imports as 31 percent of apparent steel supply. They also reported that year to date (YTD) finished steel imports (does not include semi-finished which are slabs, billets and blooms) are estimated to be 28 percent of apparent steel […]
Andre Marshall, well known commodity futures trader, CEO of Crunch Risk LLC and instructor for our Managing Price Risk I and II workshops has written today’s HRC futures article. Today he comments on the financial markets, steel, iron ore and ferrous scrap markets. Financial Markets: All time highs again in the stock markets. We are […]
Below is a press release issued by the American Institute for International Steel (AIIS) regarding September steel exports. Falls Church, VA. November 6, 2014. The United States’ steel exports declined slightly in September, though they remained just above their level of a year earlier. Exports dipped 1.4 percent from August to 1.03 million net tons. […]
AK Steel, US Steel, Nucor (verbal) and ArcelorMittal all made spot price adjustments this past week. A number of the smaller mills are holding back or have lead times out into 2015 and their order books are closed. Steel Market Update Price Momentum Indicator continues to point toward Neutral meaning prices could be in transition […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce updated license data for the month of October this afternoon. According to the data collected through November 4th imports for October will be approximately 4.3 million net tons. Based on the latest license data, October should come in around 4,381,875 net tons. This number could be +/- a couple of […]
For the week ending November 1, 2014, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,815,000 net tons (NT) of raw steel, a 1.1 percent decrease over the previous week and a 0.9 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 75.5 […]
ArcelorMittal defined the flat rolled steel price increases announced earlier last week. In their announcement AM USA management did not announce a $20 per ton increase but rather specific minimum base prices for their sales people. In the process, AM has also made a statement as to where they feel base prices on flat rolled […]