For the week ending December 21, 2013, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,733,000 net tons of raw steel, a 4.7 percent decrease over the previous week and a 2.9 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 72.3 percent, […]
I thought our Premium Level readers might appreciate the latest forecast from Timna Tanners, Bank of America Merrill Lynch metals and mining analyst. Timna was a little “light” in her price forecast for 2013 hot rolled coil which was originally $555 average and was upgraded during the year to $622. Tanners believes some of the […]
Production declined by 5.0 percent from October to 127,364,000 tonnes, partly due to less days in the month but this was also the lowest monthly tonnage since February. Capacity utilization was 74.0 percent. The annualized three month moving average production was 1.576 billion tonnes through November (Figure 1). Capacity is now 2.076 billion tonnes. Global […]
U.S. Steel – POSCO Industries (UPI) has opened their March flat rolled steel order book and in the process the company has put out a letter to their customers advising of the new minimum base prices the mill will be charging for hot rolled pickled & Oiled (HRPO), cold rolled (fully annealed) and hot dipped […]
According to The Steel Index (TSI), iron ore spot prices were reported at $132.7 per dry metric ton CFR Tianjin Port (China) for 62% Fe fines and $120.5/dmt on 58% Fe fines. Trading was quiet this week as TSI reported 62% Fe prices down $3.30/dmt and 58% Fe prices down $4.70/dmt over the past week. […]
According to Baker Hughes data from December 20th, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,768 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count is a decrease of 14 rigs when compared to last week, with oil rigs down 16 to 1,395 rigs, gas rigs up 3 to 372 rigs, […]
Financial Markets: Well two weeks back the S+P held that 1775 zone it tested. It has since rallied back to new highs yesterday at 1806.75, this for the March future. Yesterday the Fed announced the beginning of the easing of the easing, or bond buyback program. The Fed will start to taper their bond buying […]
The US International Trade Commission said it will not revoke the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hot-rolled steel products from China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Ukraine. The Dec. 17 decision was the result of a required five-year (sunset) review process. US ITC said that revoking the orders “would be likely to lead to […]
On Monday U.S. Steel put out a letter to their customers announcing a $20 per ton flat rolled spot price increase. The letter was from RY Kopf, General Manager North American Flat-Rolled Marketing and it read as follows: Effective immediately, base pricing for all new Flat-rolled products spot orders is increased by a minimum of […]
U.S. Steel announced a price increase on Monday and the market appears to be cautiously optimistic as we enter the end of 2013 and look out into the New Year. The announcement itself was termed a “non-event” by one of the construction related steel mills with whom we spoke this afternoon as increases had previously […]
For the week ending December 14, 2013, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,818,000 net tons of raw steel, a 0.6 percent decrease over the previous week but a 1.8 percent increase over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 75.9 percent, […]
California Steel Industries (CSI) opened their February order book and became the first domestic mill to announce a new round of flat rolled price increases. In a letter to their customers dated December 13, 2013 the mill advised, “Due to changing market conditions, California Steel Industries is increasing transaction prices by a minimum of the […]
According to Baker Hughes data from December 13th, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,782 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count is an increase of 7 rigs when compared to last week, with oil rigs up 14 to 1,411 rigs, gas rigs down 6 to 369 rigs, […]
The AHRI released shipment data for heating and cooling equipment for the month of October 2013. This data is important to those in the steel industry as the equipment is made out of flat rolled steels. The data is also an important economic indicator for residential construction and growth. Residential Storage Water Heaters U.S. shipments […]
The futures market has traded in a very tight range over the past couple of weeks. Prices in the front months, December and January, have continued to firm trading around $670 per ton. The further out, the curve prices have remained backwardated as the risk of imports in the 2nd quarter onwards continues to weigh […]
We communicated with one of our main Asian contacts over the past few days. We wanted to know what they have been seeing regarding new carbon sheet price offers out of China for their European customers (this source does not ship steel to the USA). We also wanted to learn more about iron ore prices […]
Apparent steel supply for October was 9,445,160 net tons, a 12.63 percent increase compared to the same month one year ago. This was due to a large increase in domestic shipments and total imports, and a decrease in exports. The net trade balance from the difference between imports and exports was a surplus of imports […]
October ferrous scrap exports totaled 1,451,844 net tons (1,317,092 metric tons) with Turkey, Korea, Taiwan, China, and Mexico being the top five countries where scrap was sent. These countries accounted for over 74.1 percent of all scrap exports. Of the higher ranking countries in the table below, there was month-over-month increase in ferrous scrap exports […]
Total U.S. steel exports for the first 10 months of 2013 were 10,871,857 net tons (NT), a 7.69 percent decrease from the 11,777,542 NT exported for the same period in 2012. NAFTA exports decreased slightly during that time frame by 173,983 NT or 1.86 percent. U.S. exports to non-NAFTA countries within the Western Hemisphere were […]
Shipments of sheet and strip products in the first 10 months of 2013 were 29,178,320 tons, a decrease of 0.3 percent from the same period last year. Shipments in the three months August through October averaged 4,216,504 tons / month, an increase of 2.4 percent from the previous 3 months May through July and an […]
The U.S. ferrous scrap market has seen prices moving higher during the first 10 days of December. We have seen shredded scrap prices moving $20 to $45 per gross ton depending on the market. Busheling has been more plentiful and has managed to remain stable to up $10 in most markets. We asked one of […]
Total steel exports rose 10.86 percent in October over September and were at the highest levels seen since May 2013. Of the 1,133,090 net tons (NT) exported in October, 52.70 percent were sent to Canada and 36.17 percent went to Mexico. The remaining 11.12 percent went to non-NAFTA countries, with tonnage going to Brazil (1.01 […]
For the week ending December 7, 2013, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,829,000 net tons of raw steel, a 0.9 percent increase over the previous week and a 2.5 increase over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 76.3 percent, up […]
Prepainted flat rolled imports increased in October over August for all products followed by SMU, especially for galvanized and electro-galvanized. Compared to the same month one year ago, prepainted imports in October significantly increased for all products. As you can see by our table below – prepainted cold rolled (CR) imports increased by 376 NT […]
Year to date net imports of all hot worked products combined was 10,025,543 tons, down by 26,420 tons from the first ten months of 2012. This reduction was entirely driven by tubulars and plate. Pipe and tube had a decline in net imports of 925,617 tons and plate a decline of 509,778 tons. All other […]
Steel buyers are bracing for a new round of flat rolled price increases according to steel buyers and executives as well as the results of our most recent Steel Market Update (SMU) market analysis of the flat rolled steel market which we conducted this past week. “It’s time to raise the price of flat rolled […]
One month ago the domestic steel mills and their manufacturing and service center contract customers were locked in a battle over where pricing would be beginning in January 2014 with many mills firming opposed to the negotiated CRU minus and buckets deal made common over the past couple of years. When we polled our respondents […]
The original forecast for December scrap pricing was for ferrous scrap prices to move sideways (no change) to slightly higher, maybe $10 per gross ton. That was three weeks ago. As the month of December moved closer, the expectation for a sideways move was replaced with up $10 to $20 per gross ton. The month […]
Final October import data was released earlier this week, showing total imports for the month at 3,101,063 net tons (2,813,240 metric tons). This figure is the highest tonnage seen since April 2012 when imports were 3,144,947 NT (2,853,051 MT). Total October imports are well above both the 3 and 12 month-moving-averages (MMA). Compared to September, […]
Imports of most rolled products and semi finished declined in November. The only exceptions were rail and tin plate. Sheet products were down by 21.5 percent in total but within that group coated products were down over 40 percent. An analysis of the 3 month moving averages (3MMA) of imports results in a very different […]