Steel Mills
April 9, 2019
HARDI Members: Bullish on Demand, Not So Much on Pricing
Written by Tim Triplett
Sales of HVAC products remain fairly strong in most parts of the country, but prices don’t fully reflect that demand, reported members of the Heating, Air-conditioning and Refrigeration Distributors International in their monthly conference call.
“I still think the market is fragile,” commented one HARDI member. “The mills have a lot of fundamentals in their favor—high capacity utilization, normal lead times and the [Trump administration’s Section 232] tariffs. Yet the steel base price is below where it was a year ago. It makes you wonder where the mills would be if the tariffs were not in place.”
