Steel Mills
February 19, 2015
MSCI Inventories & Shipment Data
Written by John Packard
According to data just released by the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI), U.S. service centers shipped 3,523,600 tons of all steel products during the month of January 2015. The daily shipment rate was 167,800 tons per day which was a slight improvement over January 2014 when the daily shipment rate was 165,800 tons. However, last year had one more shipping day than January 2015. Total steel shipments were down 3.4 percent year over year.
Total steel inventories grew slightly from 9,902,000 tons reported at the end of December to 9,961,100 tons as of the end of January. Inventories were up 16.4 percent over the prior January. The number of months on hand stood at 2.8 months on a non-adjusted basis, this is down from the 3.2 months reported at the end of December. On a seasonally adjusted basis inventories actually rose to 2.9 months as compared to 2.7 months in December. In January 2014 the months on hand stood at 2.3 and 2.5 (non-adjusted and SA respectively).
