Flat Rolled Steel Demand is Key as We Move into 1st Quarter

Essentially all of the domestic steel mills have finished maintenance on their blast furnaces. U.S. Steel is bringing back online their Fairfield furnace, Berkeley has completed the expansion of its hot strip mill and other domestic steel mill maintenance projects from 4th Quarter 2013 have been completed. Supply is available and now it is time to see if demand will support supply.

Steel Market Update has been canvassing the flat rolled steel markets to see if we can identify pockets of strength and weakness within the carbon sheet markets. We continued that process with our mid-January flat rolled steel market analysis. We began by asking our survey respondents to provide their thoughts regarding demand. As a group (all respondents combined) we found demand has been modestly improving over the past two months. As you can see by the graphic below, 29 percent reported demand as improving (up from 21 percent at the beginning of November) while those reporting demand as in decline dropped to 10 percent – 7 percent lower than the beginning of December and 5 percent better than early November.