Steel Products Prices North America
June 18, 2019
SMU Imports Report: HDG Sheet
Written by Peter Wright
SMU now offers a comprehensive series of import reports ranging from the first look at Commerce Department license data to the very detailed look at volume by district of entry and source nation. The report you are reading now is designed to plug the gap between these two. Our intention is to report regional imports for six flat rolled products every other month. This month (June), we are reporting through April.
National level import reports do a good job of measuring the overall market pressure caused by the imports of individual products. The downside is that there are huge regional differences. We believe that buyers and sellers should have an understanding of the regional differences. For example, year to date through April, total hot dipped galvanized imports were down by 17.4 percent. The two highest volume regions were the Gulf and the Great Lakes and both were down. The Rio Grande Valley, which has a much smaller tonnage, was up by over 100 percent.
