Steel Products
October 2, 2020
SMU CEO Comments on Current Steel Situation
Written by John Packard
With steel mills currently having extended mill lead times, steel buyers need to be cognizant of their inventories. If one has two months of inventory and the mills are running seven-week lead times on your products, then you need to be concerned should lead times move out even further. If you are an active buyer in the service center spot markets, the combination of extended mill lead times coupled with tight inventories (and I will discuss that in a moment) should cause you to anticipate higher spot prices out of your distributors.
SMU will produce our end of September flash report for participating service centers on Wednesday of this week. The flash report will provide a quick look at the data we have been collecting from participating service centers on flat rolled and plate since Thursday, Oct. 1. In markets like today, having access to the flash report could prove to be quite valuable.
