Steel Mills
June 20, 2016
Service Center Intake, Shipments and Inventory through May 2016
Written by Peter Wright
Based on Steel Market Update (SMU) analysis of the recently released MSCI service center inventory and shipment data, total service center carbon steel shipments decreased by 41,100 tons in May to 3.050 million tons. The number of shipping days was he same at 21. On a tons per day (t/d) basis shipments decreased from 147,200 in April to 145,200 tons in May.
In the eight years since and including 2009, May shipments on average on a t/d basis have been up by 2.1 percent from April. This year shipments were down by 1.4 percent. Therefore on a long term basis (8 years) the May performance was disappointing. This observation is only intended to give a long term perspective because MSCI data is quite seasonal and we need to get past that before commenting in detail on current results. Figure 1 demonstrates this seasonality and why comparing a month’s performance with the previous month is usually misleading.
