Service Centers
October 6, 2013
Service Center Support for Spot Price Increases Stable
Written by John Packard
The most recent survey of the flat rolled steel industry conducted by SMU began at 8 AM on Monday of this past week. Within a few hours of our start, NLMK and ArcelorMittal had both announced price increases and USS was busy telling their customers that they too would raise spot flat rolled pricing.
As our regular readers know, we have been following service center spot pricing into their customer base for a number of years. Over time, what we found is when service centers are actively moving spot prices higher the domestic mills have a better chance of collecting some or all of their price increases. When spot price support levels were tepid the mill increases had a tendency to remain uncollected and then forgotten.
