Steel Mill Lead Times: Flattening Out

Since Monday of this week Steel Market Update has been conducting a survey of the flat rolled steel market place. During the process SMU probes about a number of key topics of importance to buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel. One of the areas we deem to be very important is the status of steel mill lead times on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steels.

Lead times are the amount of time it takes (or is promised) to produce and ship steel from the time a new order is placed. During the survey process we ask manufacturing companies and flat rolled steel service centers to provide what they are seeing as the average lead times for each. We then calculate our average based on those responses.