Steel Market Update will not publish on Thursday, Nov. 28, or Sunday, Dec. 1, due to the Thanksgiving Holiday. Our offices will be closed on Friday, Nov. 29, and will reopen on Monday, Dec. 2. Our early December flat rolled and plate steel market trends survey will begin on Monday, Dec. 2. We will also […]
Virgin steel is made with iron ore, coke and limestone. It was done that way, and only that way, for many decades. Then along came the “mini” mills. So-called minimills recycle ferrous scrap, mixing it with pig iron or other iron units and melting it down in large electric arc furnaces to produce new steel. […]
The domestic steel mills were busy on Friday with SSAB USA announcing a $40 per ton price increase on steel plate, and then U.S. Steel coming out with a $30 per ton price increase on flat rolled. The SSAB increase was the second on plate this month. Flat rolled has seen three price increase announcements […]
The domestic steel mills were busy on Friday with SSAB USA announcing a $40 per ton price increase on steel plate, and then U.S. Steel coming out with a $30 per ton price increase on flat rolled. The SSAB increase was the second on plate this month. Flat rolled has seen three price increase announcements […]
Today I was on a conference call with steel buyers associated with HARDI, the trade organization whose members sell galvanized steel and other products to mechanical contractors. We have an article about the call in this evening’s issue, but there was one fact that was brought up by multiple executives: the price increases “have not […]
Do you think the country is going to be a little distracted this week with all the witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment hearings? A reminder of the results of one of our real-time polls where 53 percent of the 493 individuals responding to a question about who they were going to vote for in the […]
There is one constant to our SMU Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals Workshop – just about everyone who takes the workshop enjoys it and sees the value in the subject matter being taught. This has resulted in many of our past attendees working their way up within their company’s management structure. […]
There is one constant to our SMU Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals Workshop – just about everyone who takes the workshop enjoys it and sees the value in the subject matter being taught. This has resulted in many of our past attendees working their way up within their company’s management structure. […]
The domestic steel mills announced new $40 per ton ($2.00/cwt) price increases on flat rolled this past week. This is the second price increase on flat rolled over the past two months. The domestic mills, led by ArcelorMittal USA, announced $40 per ton spot base price increases on Oct. 24-25 and were able to collect […]
Next Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals Workshop: Jan. 8-9, 2020, in Ontario, Calif. Next Mill Tour: California Steel Industries, Fontana, Calif. This will be our 30th Steel 101 Workshop since inception. The Steel Market Update Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals Workshop has trained close to 1,000 people […]
Next Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals Workshop: Jan. 8-9, 2020, in Ontario, Calif. Next Mill Tour: California Steel Industries, Fontana, Calif. This will be our 30th Steel 101 Workshop since inception. The Steel Market Update Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals Workshop has trained close to 1,000 people […]
John Packard is traveling… Eddie Lehner, Ryerson president and CEO, is optimistic that carbon steel prices will bottom in the fourth quarter. “Given where prices are now, the recent price increases have a better chance of sticking than the ones that were announced in Q2 and Q3,” he commented during the company’s third-quarter conference call […]
London, Brexit, new election, split country. As I was standing in line to enter the House of Lords, the gentleman to my left began discussing how Brexit has severed parties and even families. No longer can British families talk about their government openly. I heard the theme on many occasions as I traveled about London […]
John Packard is traveling… While it’s too early to tell how the market will fully react to last week’s price increase announcements by the flat rolled mills, change is clearly afoot, based on the findings from SMU’s canvass of the market over the past two days. How high will prices go, and for how long? […]
John Packard is traveling… To almost no one’s surprise, the mills raised flat rolled prices by $40 a ton on Thursday and Friday in the hope of reversing the slide that has taken hot rolled as low as $470 a ton. Seven out of 10 steel buyers responding to SMU’s questionnaire last week said they […]
There was much discussion at the NASA conference and in the wake of the conference regarding scrap pricing and where prices are headed for the month of November. The discussion on scrap has been a moving target over the past week or two. We checked with some of our sources earlier this month and we […]
Another hectic week for me as I travel to Chicago on Monday and Tuesday. I will be in the office on Wednesday, Thursday and part of the day on Friday before flying to London where I will be visiting CRU offices on Oct. 28, participating in the CRU Breakfast at the British Museum on the […]
I thought John Ferriola’s comments at the World Steel Association would be of interest to our readers. Joe Innace of Platts interviewed Nucor’s Ferriola and reported him saying, “The rest of this year will be pretty flat. Going into next year, it’s really a crapshoot.” He told Platts Nucor’s downstream businesses have seen prices drop, […]
John Packard is traveling… Here’s what readers of Steel Market Update have learned this week. Steel prices continue to slide. By Steel Market Update’s calculation, the benchmark price for hot rolled steel now averages $515 per ton. That’s the lowest in 2019. Given the widespread reports of disappointing demand, worsened by the strike at GM […]
SMU continues to pick up negative vibes through the analysis we currently are actively conducting on the flat rolled and plate steel markets. There is obviously something going on that is concerning buyers and sellers of steel. At the same time, one of the steel mills told me today that even though prices on their […]
I will be out of the office this entire week traveling first to Cincinnati as we conduct our sold-out Steel 101 workshop on Tuesday and Wednesday. Later in the week I will be traveling to Minnesota (where I see temperatures are supposed to be in the 30’s for highs) for a Board of Trustees meeting […]
Our last issue sparked our readers to comment on a couple of topics. We addressed the Bayou Steel comments in another article in tonight’s issue. I will address the comments I received from U.S. Steel regarding their purchase of a portion of Big River Steel and the exposure to electrical steels (something I have never […]
Virgin steel is made with iron ore, coke and limestone. It was done that way, and only that way, for many decades. Then along came the “mini” mills. So-called minimills recycle ferrous scrap, mixing it with pig iron or other iron units and melting it down in large electric arc furnaces to produce new steel. […]
Virgin steel is made with iron ore, coke and limestone. It was done that way, and only that way, for many decades. Then along came the “mini” mills. So-called minimills recycle ferrous scrap, mixing it with pig iron or other iron units and melting it down in large electric arc furnaces to produce new steel. […]
There have been some discussions recently with articles written about the global scrap trade and China. China is the world’s largest steel producing nation with 50 percent (or greater) of the world’s steel production. A couple of years ago, I received information from one of my Chinese trading contacts about scrap steel being exported out […]
I received numerous notes regarding a hot strip mill outage at AMNS Calvert, which began last week. Based on reports from steel buyers, the HSM outage was expected to last for about one week. We asked ArcelorMittal for information and confirmation yesterday, but they failed to respond. Today, we received information that the Calvert lead […]
I highly encourage you to read the Global Steel Import Monitor put out quarterly by the U.S. Department of Commerce. It was just published for September 2019. In it are all kinds of statistics concerning U.S. steel trade. In 2018, despite antidumping duties on 35 countries, countervailing duties tacked onto 10 of those countries and […]
For those of you who are not aware, my Final Thoughts is an area where I will sometimes provide my opinion or view of the marketplace. Understand that these are my comments and are not coming from any steel mills, service centers, trading companies or the financial community. You can take them or leave them; […]
John Packard is on vacation… Mill executives have been quick to deflect criticism of their plans to spend billions on mill modernizations and upgrades, arguing that the market will be able to absorb the new capacity–but most steel buyers aren’t buying it. Three out of four respondents to Steel Market Update’s market trends questionnaire this […]
On Jan. 7-8, 2020, Steel Market Update will conduct our next Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop in Ontario, Calif. This workshop will include a tour of the California Steel Industries mill. Why do companies send employees to our Steel 101 workshops? Because they receive a broader understanding of: How steel […]