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 […]
Prices dropped on all of the indexes and all of the products followed by Steel Market Update. The average for hot rolled, based on the four indexes, was $641 per ton. Steel Market Update saw the market as being down to an average of $630 per ton just prior to the AK Steel announcement. The […]
The American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported their final raw steel production numbers for the month of September 2014. This estimation is different than the weekly raw steel production as it is based on 75 percent of the domestic mills reporting vs. 50 percent for the weekly estimates. Total raw steel production for the […]
Cliffs Natural Resources is a leading producer and supplier of iron ore pellets to the Great Lakes regions. CEO Lourenco Goncalves spoke at length about the iron ore market during the Cliffs earnings conference call this week. “Our U.S. Iron Ore pellets are often incorrectly compared with seaborne iron ore fines. Fines require additional processing […]
Cliffs Natural Resources reported a net loss of 5.9 billion for third quarter. Consolidated revenue fell by 16 percent year over year to $1.3 billion due primarily to significantly lower prices for iron ore and metallurgical coal. Adjusted EBITDA for third quarter was $233 million, 45 percent below third quarter 2013. Cliff’s has had a […]
There has been a flurry of activity as buyers and sellers of steel anticipate a possible price increase announcement (which came late this afternoon in the form of a $20 increase out of AK Steel). Buyers reported the domestic mills as being aggressive this week and we saw our price averages negatively impacted as prices […]
This article was written just prior to the AK Steel announcement of a $20 per ton price increase which we received after 5 PM this afternoon. Steel Market Update reported in a recent issue (SMU Oct. 23rd) recently that this is the time of the year that the domestic steel mills traditionally move to stem […]
As expected, the Russian hot rolled tonnage won’t be missed for very long as Brazil, Turkey and other countries look to fill the void. The upside for buyers is the replacement mills produce a superior product to what was coming in from Russia. At the moment we are being advised by current Russian buyers that […]
The American Institute for International Steel (AISI) says the increase in imports this year is a sign of a healthy economy. Increased imports indicate increased demand and thriving businesses. The press release from AIIS follows: Falls Church, Va., October 27, 2014 – Steel imports continued their upward trend in September, increasing 5.2 percent over their […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued to erode this past week based on SMU analysis of the CRU, Platts and SteelBenchmarker steel indices for the week ending October 24, 2014. Hot rolled prices now average $645 per ton, down $3 per ton from the prior week. If you remove SteelBenchmarker from the average, since they did […]
Total September steel imports were just shy 3.9 million net tons according to the Preliminary Census numbers just released by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Total steel imports were up 5.2 percent over August data, and up 38.0 percent year over year. Semi-finished imports (mostly slabs) were up 6.3 percent month over month and 47.3 […]
Buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel are advising Steel Market Update that the domestic steel mills are receptive to negotiating prices on all products. Based on the most recent SMU flat rolled steel market survey results, 94 percent of the respondents reported the mills as willing to discuss hot rolled pricing. This is up […]
Steel Market Update is hearing the rumors about the potential for a new flat rolled steel price increase. The rumors are mostly coming from the service center and financial community. But, our readers, if paying attention, should not be surprised by the rumors and the real possibility that the mills will attempt to cut their […]
Steel Dynamics admitted in their conference call with analysts earlier today, that the timing is not right for a trade case against cold rolled and coated steels (the question asked was about Chinese the answer did not reference any specific country). We thought our readers would be interested in the complete dialogue between two of […]
Based on the analysis of the responses we received so far this week on our survey coupled with channel checks we found flat rolled steel prices slipped on cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume while remaining the same on hot rolled. We found that it is too early to see if the termination of the Russian […]
Everyone is aware of the high level of flat rolled imports in 2014 – especially cold rolled and coated products. So, where does 2014 rank on a historical basis? It is on pace to be the third highest year on record. We have 8 months of actual import data on the books. August year-to-date flat […]
The following is our October analysis of the flat rolled and OCTG imports based on license data through October 21, 2014. As we have mentioned many times, license data is not exact and many times can lead one to over or under project final steel import numbers. We have seen license data for the first […]
Production in September on a tons per day basis was 4.481 million tonnes, up from 4.342 in August. This was the third month since February when production was <4.5 million tons per day. For the month of September production was 134.421 million tonnes down from 135.167 in August. This was a seasonal effect, due to […]
For the week ending October 18th, 2014, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,822,000 net tons (NT) of raw steel, a 1.0 percent increase over the previous week but a 0.5 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 75.7 […]
For the week ending October 25th, 2014, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,835,000 net tons (NT) of raw steel, a 0.7 percent increase over the previous week and a 0.2 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 76.3 […]
Figure 1 shows historical gas and oil prices since January 2000. The daily spot price of West Texas Intermediate fell below $100 in August and by October 14th was down to $81.72, the latest daily figure available from the Energy Information Administration, (EIA.) Brent closed at $86.36 on the same day. The EIA has calculated […]
On Friday, Steel Market Update adjusted our hot rolled coil price range from $630-$670 per ton to $620-$660 per ton. This action was taken after multiple buyers from across the country produced information regarding numerous mills taking aggressive positions for new hot rolled orders. We mentioned in our Thursday evening newsletter that we were considering […]
US pipe producers filed dumping and countervailing duty petitions on Line Pipe against producers in Korea and Turkey, alleging dumping margins of 16 percent against Turkey and from 58 percent to 221 percent against Korea (the alleged CVD margins are not known or not published at this time). This comes relatively shortly after the trade case […]
On Friday, Steel Market Update adjusted our hot rolled coil price range to $620-$660 per ton and our average was adjusted to $640 per ton. All of the other indexes also moved lower on hot rolled coil and the average of the four steel price indexes moved lower by $8 per ton to $647 per […]
The market believed that consolidation of the steel mills would result in a much more disciplined industry, especially regarding flat rolled steel prices. Larger steel mills and fewer players would mean less negotiating and better control of production facilities. That is what the market wanted to believe. However, it is not easy for a leopard […]
Although we heard from a number of buyers mixed messages regarding the spot markets. Some buyers are seeing the market as continuing to weaken while others feel the mills have dug in their heals and prices are firm (at least in their region of the country). We have heard rumors of one, or more, mills […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) is changing the way we look at the import license data. As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, the steel import license data can only provide an idea as to how imports are shaping up for the current month. The licenses received have been tending to surge at the beginning of […]
Cliffs Natural Resources will begin using trucks to transport taconite pellets to the docks from its Minnesota facility due to rail congestion in the upper Midwest. In an announcement on Friday, the company said it will immediately begin utilizing 100 trucks per day to ship iron ore pellets from Hibbing Taconite to the Duluth-Superior harbor […]
For the week ending October 11, 2014, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,804,000 net tons (NT) of raw steel, a 1.2 percent decrease over the previous week and a 1.5 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 75.0 […]