Steel Products Prices North America
April 26, 2015
Steel Distributors Calling on Steel Mills to Make a Move
Written by John Packard
Service centers and wholesalers are making no bones about it – it is time for the steel mills to raise steel prices. A good example was comments made by incoming Reliance Steel & Aluminum CEO, Gregg Mollins during last week’s earnings conference call:
” I think personally we expect a price increase in the not too distant future. The spreads are close. Speaking only for Reliance … there is no reason or logic to go out and purchase material offshore given the pricing decline that we’ve seen, especially since the first of the year. So there is no compelling desire to go out and buy foreign. So if that the case and it has fallen below producers expectations, there is no reason for it not to go up. If I were a producer, I would announce a price increase today. Because the spreads are thin, business is good, consumption is there. We’re not hurting by way of terms of volume, pricing has been our major problem for some time now. So get the damn pricing up!”
