John Packard Discusses Steel Prices, Inventories & More

Flat-rolled steel inventories continue to rise at service centers, and steel buyers are not flocking to do their normal end-of-year deals with steel mills.

Steel Market Update has not yet produced our final Service Center Inventories and Shipment report. But we have published our “Flash” report, which we provide to our data providers after collecting five days of data. It shows flat rolled inventories continuing to expand. We anticipate them continuing to rise through December as steel buyers take advantage of contract deals at below spot pricing (and below newly negotiated contract pricing for 2022), as domestic steel suppliers begin to catch up on late orders, and as an influx of foreign steel hits the ports.