The convoy of freighters headed to Minnesota under US and Canadian Coast Guard escort arrived safely on Monday morning. The ships dispersed to begin loading iron ore pellets and to queue up for the return convoy east across the Great Lakes to the mills. USCG Mackinaw is expected to depart Duluth this afternoon to escort […]
The Asian scrap markets is currently stable and predicted to slow down both regarding demand as well as pricing over the next few weeks. Mainly, summer time electricity curtailments are scheduled to take effect in early May. Currently: • China Fe63.% Indian Iron ore at about $116-117/dmt. Somewhat stable +/-$1/dmt currently• Asian FX rates have […]
The Broad Index value of the US Dollar has been gradually increasing for 18 months (Figure 1) which tends of raise imports to the US and depress exports. The broad index is a weighted average of the foreign exchange values of the U.S. Dollar against the currencies of a large group of major U.S. trading […]
First, our questions posed to U.S. Steel remained unanswered as we reached the end of the day today. The last we heard they were running two blast furnaces at reduced capacities for each at Gary Works. It is not known exactly how many tons per day of pig iron or steel are being produced. Iron […]
Coast Guard cutters are still helping iron ore freighters to navigate to their destinations on the Great Lakes. Ore freighters Sam Laud (destination Duluth), Stewart J. Cort and Algoma Discovery (destination Superior), Edwin Gott and Edgar B Speer (destination two Harbors) are in a convoy of five ships underway in Lake Superior at the tip of […]
Here is what I know/understand regarding the situation at US Steel as of early Sunday evening, April 13th. Our sources are advising us USS is moving iron ore from Great Lakes to Gary. We are also following the vessels which are now being reported as in port in Minnesota loading ore. We are aware that […]
Because of the severity of the curtailment of steelmaking at US Steel Gary Works and the shut down of steelmaking operations at USS Great Lakes we feel it is important to update our readers and the greater steel community as to what we have learned over the past 48 hours. First, Great Lakes steelmaking operations […]
Ice conditions for the Great Lakes are still pretty severe, particularly for Lake Superior with 83.2 percent of the surface still frozen according to analysis reports from the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. Total ice coverage on the Lakes as of April 9 is 58.6 percent. With shipping season officially underway in the St. Mary’s […]
The following article is written by Andre Marshall, CEO of Crunchrisk, LLC and our instructor for our Managing Price Risk and Managing Price Risk 2: Strategies & Execution workshops. Financial Markets: Well we are a fairly precarious point in the S+P 500 and DOW. You might recall that we were headed to 1900 to test […]
Bank of America Merrill Lynch gave their quarterly global steel outlook on April 8. BofAML predicts demand for finished steel in China will grow 4.4 percent in 2014. Chinese crude steel production is expected to increase 4.6 to 815 million tons. The outlook is for a trend of slowing but positive growth. Despite mill closings […]
US Steel has been very cooperative answering Steel Market Update inquiries regarding the status of their Gary Works and Great Lakes steel mills. Both mills have issues regarding steelmaking operations. Because the steel industry is prone to over-react when production issues hit any mill we thought it prudent to try to understand to the best […]
More flat rolled steel mills have joined in and raised flat rolled steel prices over the past couple of days. On Friday, April 4th USS/POSCO sent a letter to their customers advising them that flat rolled steel base prices would rise by $30 per ton ($1.50/cwt) on all products. UPI opened their June order book […]
Steel Market Update requested information from US Steel regarding the status of USS Gary Works, which has been running steelmaking at reduced capacity due to a lack of raw materials and, USS Great Lakes which has steelmaking operations temporarily down due to damages suffered when a main collector pipe fell collapsing part of the roof […]
Unusual ice build-up on the Great Lakes has caused delays of raw materials headed for steel mills in the Midwest. Earlier this week, US Steel notified customers that Gary Works blast furnaces and steelmaking operations will be down temporarily due to “unforeseen and unprecedented ice conditions on the Great Lakes that is delaying the transportation […]
The month of March proved to be an interesting month for the flat rolled steel industry and related commodities associated with the industry, both within North America and around the world. The biggest news was the move by the domestic mills to raise flat rolled steel prices. ArcelorMittal led the way on March 17th when […]
Flat rolled steel pricing momentum reversed course due to the price increase announcement led by ArcelorMittal and followed by virtually all of the domestic and Canadian steel mills. We moved the SMU Price Momentum Indicator first to Neutral and then a week later to Higher in response to the increase announcements and the fact that […]
Barge shipping is beginning to accelerate as winter ice melts on US waterways. The MID-SHIP Report says navigation has resumed on the Illinois River and the middle section of the Upper Mississippi, north to Clinton, Iowa. The Upper Mississippi is still ice covered and chunks of ice on both rivers are slowing barge transit. The […]
Friday was a sad day at Sparrows Point as the dismantling of the facility took on the BOF (basic oxygen furnace). There was a controlled demolition of the BOF on Friday. Essentially, this leaves only the blast furnace to be destroyed. One of our instructors who lives close to the Sparrows Point facility told us […]
We are beginning to see a new push away from a fragmented steel mill supply base as closures of capacity coupled with the recent acquisition of ThyssenKrupp Steel USA by ArcelorMittal/Nippon Steel Sumitomo Metals Corporation (AM/NS Calvert) are reducing the number of players and the tons in the game. Over the past two years we […]
US Steel is considering replacing additional blast furnaces with electric arc furnaces (EAF) according to President and CEO Mario Longhi. In January, US Steel announced it was seeking permits to replace the blast furnace at Fairfield, Ala., with an EAF, a process that would take approximately three years from application to completion. The EAF would […]
Spot iron ore prices in China have been in a state of fluctuation having come down from $122.60/dmt at the beginning of the year to the current level of $111.80/dmt on 62% Fe. The economic slow down in China and the over abundance of ore inventories in China coupled with banks cracking down on iron […]
Details on steel trade data out of China were released earlier this week on iron ore imports, steel scrap imports, and flat rolled steel imports and exports. Chinese imports of iron ore in February were 61,240,000 metric tons (MT), a decrease of 29.6 percent from the previous month but an increase of 8.5 percent from […]
Stemcor, a privately owned steel trading company hit hard by the global financial crisis, has secured a $1.15 billion syndicated loan to bolster trading activity that fell sharply after the company defaulted on an $850 million loan last year. Stemcor received approval last month by the UK courts to restructure its billion dollar debt and […]
AK Steel expects to report a net loss of $0.44 to $0.49 per diluted share for the first quarter of 2014 due to outages and weather related energy costs, according to earnings guidance released by the company. Significant costs of $47 million resulted from the unplanned outage of the Ashland Works blast furnace and planned […]
The following article on hot rolled futures (HRC), #1 busheling futures (BUS) as well as information regarding the iron ore spot pricing and futures trading in China is written by Andre Marshall, CEO of Crunch Risk, LLC and the instructor for Steel Market Update’s Managing Price Risk workshop series. Our new: Managing Price Risk 2: […]
Haixen Steel, a mill in Shanxi province of China, suspended operations on five blast furnaces after defaulting on a bank loans due on March 7. Haixen is not a top tier Chinese steel mill nor is the default and shutdown a surprise to most. It is a mill heavy in debt and on the Chinese […]
The following article on the financial, hot rolled coil futures, busheling scrap futures and iron ore markets is written by Andre Marshall, CEO of Crunchrisk, LLC and our Managing Price Risk 1 and 2 instructor. Financial Markets: Today was not a good one, a repeat of last week when the market retraced on the back […]
Metallurgical coal and iron ore prices were the topic of conversation in a call hosted by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Platts earlier today. Met coal prices have been on a downward trend with a 10 percent correction in just the last two weeks and are currently at the lowest level since 2007. Lower […]
In the last three months the US dollar has strengthened against fourteen of the currencies of the major sixteen steel trading nations. In the last one month, that trend has reversed and eleven of the steel trading currencies have strengthened against the US dollar. Table 1 shows the number of currency units that it takes […]
Prices continue to erode on all flat rolled steel and buyers expect the trend to continue as iron ore, met coal and scrap prices retreat in their markets. One domestic flat rolled steel buyer pointed out, “The cost of production is coming down.” The expectation is that lower scrap prices will translate into lower hot […]