SMU Survey: Purchase of Severstal Good or Bad for Your Company?

Steel Market Update (SMU) began our mid-July flat rolled steel market analysis (survey) on Monday of this week, shortly after Severstal announced the sale of their North American operations. We included questions about the sale both as a group and in industry segments of the survey.

As a group, those responding were of the opinion that steel mill consolidation would result in higher flat rolled steel prices. Sixty one percent of the respondents believe prices will rise while 2 percent were of the opinion that prices would fall. The remaining 37 percent do not believe consolidation will have any direct impact on pricing.