Final Thoughts

Good evening (or Good Morning depending on when you read our newsletter) from Chicago. The mood is upbeat by most attending the Boy Scout Dinner due to the rising steel prices which have helped service centers and steel mills get healthier.

A couple of secondary steel service centers told me that their business has also been affected by the tightness in the market. At the beginning of my steel career I sold secondary galvanized steel. So, I was asking how the end customers of the secondary service centers were reacting to price and quality (secondary buyers can sometimes be a little claim happy). I was told that the market has changed. Service centers are walking away from the stubborn buyer who hasn’t yet accepted reality. One east coast secondary service center told me about a structural steel buyer who, in the past, refused to accept grade 60 coils. Now, the service center was being chastised by that same end user for not offering the same grade 60 coils to them (of course we can use them…!).