Lead Times Slip on Cold Rolled and Coated Steels

In our last issue of Steel Market Update we wrote about lead times shrinking as being one of the reasons why we adjusted our Price Momentum Indicator. We cited published lead times by NLMK USA and Nucor Berkeley as examples of the changes we were seeing and discussing with steel buyers. This week we conducted our flat rolled steel market trends analysis and as part of that process we asked for information about lead times. Based on the average of all of the data points received we found hot rolled lead times remained the same as what we saw at the beginning of the month while cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume lead times were shorter.

Hot rolled lead times are averaging just under 4.0 weeks (3.73 weeks) according to our survey participants. This is in line with the 3.80 weeks reported at the beginning of August. This is also about a half a week longer than what we saw at this point in time last year when our survey found the average HRC lead time to be 3.38 weeks.