Steel Mill Negotiations: Everyone Was Dancing Prior to Price Announcements

On Monday of this week, Steel Market Update began collecting data for our mid-October flat rolled steel market trends analysis. We invited over 600 companies to participate in our questionnaire. The vast majority of the respondents are either service centers or manufacturing companies. Based on the data collected we found that prior to any of the steel price announcements, the vast majority of buyers and sellers of steel were reporting the steel mills as willing to negotiate hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steel pricing.

Steel buyers’ perceptions of their suppliers’ attitudes offer a snapshot of how steel mills are currently handling price negotiations. We will not know if the steel mills will significantly alter their negotiation stances until our next market trends analysis is conducted during the first week of November. We are going to refer to two data collection points from this week’s questionnaire as we look at price negotiations.