Steel Products Prices North America
October 27, 2015
September and October Imports Seesaw
Written by John Packard
The U.S. Department of Commerce (US DOC) released Preliminary Census Data for September foreign steel imports on Monday. September imports dropped below 3.0 million net tons and at 2.77 million net tons they were down 5 percent month-over-month. As you can see by the table below hot rolled imports were down by 100,000 tons and galvanized and cold rolled imports were also down.
The bad news (if you are a steel mill) is October license data continues to point to a 3.0 million plus tonnage month and, at this moment, is trending toward 3.47 million tons. The biggest increase in tonnage, however, is due to the steel mills themselves as license data is trending just shy 1.0 million net tons of slabs and there is also an increase of hot rolled coil (a portion of which is also going to domestic steel mills).
