“It would be an understatement to say 2015 was a difficult year in the steel industry,” said Olympic Steel president and COO David Wolfort during the company’s earnings conference call. Olympic Steel reported a net loss of $5.0 million for fourth quarter 2015 and a net loss of $26.8 million for the full year 2015. […]
Steel Market Update asked steel buyers how they were seeing the flat rolled steel market so far this week. One large Midwest based service center told us, “Eerily quiet.” Other buyers basically provided the same guidance. Hot rolled order books continue to be weak to moderate while cold rolled and coated lead times are extended […]
Currency markets have been anything but stable since our last update on January 25th and this shows up clearly in our examination of the currencies of the steel trading nations. Expectations of four rate hikes by the FOMC seem to have flown out the window. On February 3rd Josh Brown wrote, “Perhaps the biggest headline […]
The following is the Chicago Federal Reserve statement followed by our own graphical analysis. The CFNAI is an excellent reality check for much of the economic analysis that we routinely provide in The Steel Market Update and is also a reasonably good predictor of the direction of steel demand with a six to nine month […]
Once a month HARDI wholesalers conduct a conference call for those member companies who are involved in the sale of galvanized sheet and coils to the mechanical contractors involved in residential and commercial construction. Steel Market Update publisher, John Packard, has been involved with the HARDI organization for many years going back to his steel […]
There has been too little attention paid to the passage of the ENFORCE Act by the U.S. Congress a few weeks back. At least that is how trade attorney Lewis Leibowitz sees it. He warned those at our 2015 Steel Summit Conference that the domestic steel mills were trying to build a “dam” against steel […]
The Department of Commerce is initiating a circumvention inquiry on imports of cut-to-length steel plate from China following a petition from Nucor and SSAB. The two steel mills assert that producers, exporters and importers are circumventing duties imposed on CTL by adding alloys, such as boron, titanium and chromium to the product. The Department of […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce updated foreign steel import license data this afternoon (February 23rd). Based on a daily license rate of 81,355 tons, February is trending toward 2.2-2.3 million tons. This is slightly lower than the 2.4 million ton pace we saw based on license data through the 16th of February. At 2.3 million […]
The Department of Commerce has announced affirmative preliminary determinations in the antidumping investigations of imports of heavy walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Korea, Mexico, and Turkey. The investigations cover heavy walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes, which are rectangular (including square) welded carbon steel pipes and tubes that have […]
BlueScope Steel is one of only a handful of major steel companies around the world that is reporting profit. Underlying EBIT for the first half of FY 2016 was $166.5 million, up 35 percent year over year.. Commenting on the outlook for the company, CEO Paul O’Malley said, “Notwithstanding a challenging macroeconomic environment, we are […]
One of the questions being asked in the marketplace is how much foreign steel is being ordered and will there be a flood of imports as we move into the months of May and June. There is a portion of the market who believe there will be a flood while others are of the opinion […]
China’s Ministry of Commerce is calling for European Union cooperation to address the world’s iron and steel overcapacity. Current “trade protectionism” will only have a further negative impact on the industry said Commerce spokesperson Shen Danyang in response to new antidumping measures from the EU. At news conference last week, Shen said overcapacity in the […]
SMU has developed a series of reports that cover hot rolled, cold rolled, HDG, other metallic coated, coiled plate and semi-finished slabs. These reports are a detailed drill down into tons by source country and port of entry. Total imports of HR in 2015 were 3,477,187 metric tons. Table 1 shows the tonnage by port […]
SAULT STE. MARIE, ONTARIO – On January 29, 2016, Essar Steel Algoma appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn the January 6, 2016 decision of the Canadian International Trade Tribunal (“CITT”) regarding dumped and subsidized hot-rolled carbon steel plate and high-strength low-alloy steel plate imports from India and Russia. In their ruling, the […]
Steel Market Update received trade data from one of our sources regarding Chinese imports and exports of various products including steel. The number that the world markets are discussing is steel exports which totaled 112,400,000 metric tons for calendar year 2015 (123,900,000 net tons). These are big numbers. The U.S. domestic steel industry, which is […]
Steel workers and chief executives from 17 European member states took to the streets in Brussels on Monday to protest the dumping of steel products and granting of market economy status to China. Market status would only worsen the European steel crisis, claimed protestors, and cost tens of thousands of jobs. EUROFER, the European Steel […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released foreign steel import license data through the 16th of February this afternoon. Licenses are running in line with what we saw during the month of January. January (which has 31 days) is looking like a 2.6-2.8 million ton month. February should be slightly less than that and currently is […]
Last week, the Senate passed the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 (TFTEA). The bill contains important provisions of the Enforcing Orders and Reducing Customs Evasion (ENFORCE) Act that have been promoted by the U.S. steel and manufacturing industries to combat evasion of antidumping and countervailing duties . Evasion is defined as failing […]
On Monday there was a meeting between Russia and select OPEC members where they agreed to an oil output freeze at January levels in an effort to tackle a global supply glut. This was a closed door meeting in Doha between Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Qatar and Russia. Evidently there was a caveat that other members […]
On Sunday Steel Market Update published an article about the Carrier announcement that they would be moving their manufacturing and distribution facilities from Indianapolis, Indiana to Mexico. The announcement got the attention of Donald Trump who mentioned it during the debates on Saturday. Our article and the news also got the attention of a number […]
SSAB faced a tough market in fourth quarter resulting in an operating loss of SEK 802 million ($94.4 million). Low volumes and steel prices in North America and Europe and a maintenance outage at SSAB Special Steels were contributing factors. For the full year 2015, SSAB posted an operating loss of SEK 128 million ($15.2 […]
In 2015, 4.9 million metric tons of slabs were imported into the US. Of that tonnage 1.8 million tonnes (1,984 million net tons) came into Mobile (bound for AMNS Calvert) and 1.2 million (1.322 million net tons) into Los Angeles (bound for California Steel). Most of the Mobile tonnage came from Brazil and the Los […]
EVRAZ North America announced it will idle indefinitely the Portland Spiral pipe mill in Oregon, effective April 9, 2016. The idling will result in the termination of 130 employees. The closure was “a result of economic challenges from three primary factors: delays in regulatory approvals for pipelines in the U.S. and Canada; the influx of […]
The Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 passed by a margin of 75-20 in the Senate this morning. The customs bill has been advocated by the steel industry to strengthen measures to combat unfairly traded and subsidized imports. The bill now moves to the President for anticipated approval and signature. The American Iron […]
This report summarizes total steel supply annually from 2007 through 2015 and year on year changes. It then compares domestic mill shipments and total supply to the market. It quantifies market direction by product and enables a side by side comparison of the degree to which imports have absorbed demand. Sources are the American Iron […]
In the twelve eleven months of 2015 bulk scrap exports were 12,955,000 metric tonnes, down by 9.7 percent from 2014 (14,280,000 net tons). The tonnages shown in Figure 1 are based on three month moving averages (3MMA) for 2015 and on the annual monthly average for previous years. The graph shows that exports declined for three […]
With the release of the December 2015 Final Census data we thought our readers would like to see not only how imports have fared over the past few years but, how those who are the largest exporters fared as well as those who are involved in the hot rolled, cold rolled and CORE (corrosion resistant) […]
According to the latest data released from the US Department of Commerce and the American Iron and Steel Institute, apparent steel supply for the month of December 2015 was 7,878,660 net tons. Apparent steel supply is calculated by adding domestic steel shipments and finished US steel imports and subtracting total US steel exports. December supply […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Board of Directors this week approved the Institute’s 2016 Public Policy Agenda during its meeting in Washington, D.C. The Agenda outlines aggressive pro-manufacturing policy strategies to guide advocacy for the upcoming year and highlights the importance of the steel industry to the U.S. economy and […]
There seems to be little doubt that there is some strength in the cold rolled and coated products markets. The lead times are extended with ArcelorMittal being into May on galvanized according to one of their automotive service centers. We heard from a couple of the conversion mills who told us their orders books were […]