Service Centers
August 8, 2017
Service Center Inventories Based on SMU Analysis
Written by John Packard
Steel Market Update (SMU) has been expanding our analysis of flat rolled steel service center inventories in an effort to provide a second opinion on this key subject for both buyers and sellers.
We continue to review inventory levels through the use of our flat rolled steel market trends questionnaire that we distribute twice per month. We usually get approximately 50 service centers of various sizes participating in any one query. We have found over the years that the steel service centers responding tend to keep their inventories in a range from 1.75 months to as high as 3.5 months. We then average all of the numbers (not weighted) to come up with our months on hand average, which this past week was 2.34 months supply.
