Manufacturing Demand / Releases Continue to Improve

As mentioned in a previous article in this newsletter, during our flat rolled steel market survey process we break out the different market segments into questionnaires that are dedicated to their industry. This allows us to compare market trends to see if they match. A good example is manufacturing demand.  We asked manufacturing companies if they were buying more, less or the same amount of steel right now than they bought at this time last year.

What we have been seeing out of the manufacturing companies since the beginning of April, is a steady improving trend of manufacturers reporting at higher and higher percentages that they are buying more steel than one year ago. Last week we found 43 percent of the manufacturing companies reporting that their company was buying more steel than one year ago. This is a 7 percent improvement over the past two weeks and a 28 percent increase since the first week of April 2014.