Steel Products Prices North America
November 12, 2014
Apparent Supply of Sheet and Strip Products through September 2014
Written by Peter Wright
Apparent supply, a proxy for market demand is defined as domestic mill shipments to domestic locations plus imports. Sources are the American Iron and Steel Institute and the US Department of Commerce with analysis by SMU. The three month moving average (3MMA) of the total tonnage of sheet and strip supply in the period July through September was 5,022,754 tons, up by 12.1 percent from the same period last year and by 17.1 percent from the same period in 2012.
Table 1 shows the performance by product over three, twelve and twenty four month periods. In three months through September, supply of all sheet and strip products advanced by 2.8 percent compared to three months through June. Cold rolled and electro-galvanized declined in this concurrent three month comparison. Electro-galvanized also declined year over year as all other products expanded. Year over year hot band grew by 10.5 percent, cold rolled by 11.7 percent and HGD by 16.4 percent.
