HARDI Wholesalers Call For Disciplined Sales Approach to Market

“Welcome to March Madness..,” is what one HARDI member company had to say during the March 2016 HARDI galvanized steel conference call held earlier today. He went on to say, “Brackets are an indication of what we are seeing – a lot of chaos out there… The [index name removed] base price is up 23 percent, zinc up about 14 percent, lead times at all mills extended, and some don’t have spot availability. MSCI levels at lowest levels since 2014. Take into consideration hot rolled trade cases which were favorable for mills especially when combined with cold rolled and coated… Domestic mill rationalization, from offshore less tons coming in, no one exempt at this point… There are fewer options than 30 days ago and much fewer than 3 months ago. Everyone needs to do one thing and make sure your purchasing and sales areas are both on the same page. There is a lack of discipline taking place out there and we need to make sure sales teams quoting out on the street are aligned with purchasing and what is happening there. Because right now it look like the market will be very strong due to supply constraints alone through the second quarter.”

One of the wholesalers out of the Southeast had said last month that he believed galvanized prices would be “range bound” due to tepid demand. “I thought range prices would be range bound but was clearly wrong.  You all described the market pretty accurately and that is what we are seeing.  [Name removed] you said about making sure purchasing and sales on same team and that is critical.  But I still wish that we could get some of the nontraditional service centers on same page as us.  And the fact of the matter is we are quoting fairly aggressively and we are still losing significant percentage of business we are quoting.  Not to name names, but the momentum the mills have right now has not seemed to phase some of our competitors… It has got to at some point. I haven’t seen that [the higher mill prices] translate to the market as much as I hoped.”