Steel Products Prices North America
April 17, 2016
Why Sheet Buyers Should Ignore Published Capacity Utilization Rates
Written by John Packard
One of the issues confusing the sheet (flat rolled steel) marketplace is the Raw Steel Production report produced by the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI). This report is produced on a weekly and then again on a monthly basis. The weekly report is released every Monday afternoon and Steel Market Update publishes the data in our Tuesday evening newsletter. The weekly report is based on 50 percent (or less) of the steel mill capacity reporting their production numbers. The AISI then comes up with a calculation (or best guess) as to what the production rate is for the week and then again based on the “available” capacity what the capacity utilization rate is for the week.
For the week ending April 9th and reported this past week, the raw steel production was calculated to be 1,656,000 tons with a capacity utilization rate of 70.8 percent.
