The Story Behind this Market: Steel Mill Lead Times

Many of you have read that hot rolled is the weakest product and that there is a significant spread between domestic hot rolled base prices and those of cold rolled and galvanized steel. Even with the energy markets being in the so-called “crapper” impacting the hot rolled order books, we are seeing stronger steel mill lead times than what we collected in early December as well as what we saw one year ago. It is our opinion the extended lead times are the result of less supply (both domestic and foreign) and a need by the manufacturers and service centers to begin to build back inventories.

The following lead times on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume are from the data collected this week during our flat rolled market trends analysis. Do not confuse these lead times (which are averages of the total responses collected by product) with the published mill sheets or what you may receive from your mill supplier. We report on those lead times separately and did so in the last edition of Steel Market Update.