Steel Products
March 6, 2013
Initial Reaction to Price Increases Raise Questions about Supply and Demand
Written by John Packard
“No demand- it is like raising ticket prices to see a last place team.” – Service Center
Domestic mill price increases have a way of touching the nerve of the steel community. Whenever there is a price increase announcement and Steel Market Update (SMU) conducts our next steel market survey – we tend to gather an abundance of comments from those responding to our questions. The latest increase comes just six weeks after a previous price increase which, at best managed to stem the slide in the spot market for only a short couple of weeks. The latest increase announcements will have some short term support based on scrap prices moving higher for the month of March in many markets. However, steel buyers and sellers out in the daily market continue to point to excessive supply as the big elephant in the room which needs to be addressed before prices have a chance of moving appreciably higher from here.
