Steel Products Prices North America
July 7, 2015
SMU Price Ranges & Indices: Still Struggling (is that about to change?)
Written by John Packard
Flat rolled steel prices have been struggling to keep momentum and move higher. We have not yet seen full compliance with the second price increase and now we have a new round of price increases beginning with the $40 per ton announced by US Steel this morning. We did see some minor changes to hot rolled and cold rolled which both moved higher while galvanized was unchanged. Galvalume prices dropped by $5 per ton.
We expect things to change in the coming days. We spoke with one commercial manager for a steel mill this afternoon who advised SMU, “At 9 AM I would have said the same [steel prices compared to last week]. But at 10 AM that changed [USS announcement]…” He went on to say, “We are evaluating our position after this morning’s price increase announcements.” We are quite sure that other mill managers are doing the same this afternoon.
