Steel Mills
November 19, 2014
Service Center Intake, Shipments and Inventory in October 2014
Written by Peter Wright
Total service center carbon steel shipments in October increased by 244,000 tons to 3.742 million tons. This was due to an increase in shipping days from 21 to 23. On a tons per day basis (t/d) shipments decreased from 166,600 tons in September to 162,700 in October.
In every month this year since March, t/d shipments for each particular month have been the best since 2008. Daily shipments in October decreased by 2.3 percent from September, the average decrease September to October since 2004 has been 3.5 percent. Figure 1 demonstrates the seasonality of service center shipments and why comparing a month’s performance with the previous month is usually misleading.
