SMU Price Ranges & Indices: Mills Get What They Want

This week was a tough one to figure out where transaction prices actually are at this moment in time. What makes it challenging is mill offers appear to be firm from mill to mill with very little wiggle room at this moment. The second issue making things tough to evaluate pricing is we had a flurry of orders over the last two weeks and now the only buyers in the market are the unprepared (and they tend to not be the one’s we speak to). Third, you have a number of mills who have temporarily suspended their order books or, are sold out until June and haven’t yet opened their order books. All in all it makes for a very challenging situation.

The mills will be happy with SMU this week as we did take into consideration price offers and how firm the mills are in holding the line at the price levels announced. Not every mill has made a price announcement but, not every mill has steel available to be sold into the spot market.