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The American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) ABI Index – a leading indicator of non-residential construction activity 9-12 months into the future – rose for the third consecutive … more
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Domestic mills reduced rebar and beams by $15/ton effective immediately, by offsetting the $28/ton scrap surcharge with a $13/ton base price increase, while mills cut …more
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The MSCI August report held good news and bad news. Inventories for flat-rolled are continuing to decline, completely negating the view that flat-rolled pricing strength …more
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Our Advance/Decliner Index increased for the first time in five weeks, after falling to an eight-week low. The uptick was mainly driven by rebounding Chinese …more
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Steel Market Production Cuts – The details of yesterday’s directive received by Italian steelmaker Ilva – from the court of Taranto – were made public today. Ilva will have to decommission two blast furnaces (No. 1 and No. 5) and its No. 1 BOF will be closed. The No. 2 BOF will be upgraded along with a reorganization of their scrap yard; costs from the maintenance plan are estimated to be €400 – €500 million.
Steel Market Production Cuts – Keystone Steel & Wire Co. is expected to take a two-week maintenance outage from Oct. 20 to Nov. 3 at its melt shop and rod mill in Peoria, IL.
Steel Market Production Increases – Brazilian-based Tuper finished construction on its 180,000 tpy OCTG plant in São Bento do Sul and announced a plan for a possible subsidiary in Houston, TX as the company’s primary goal is to meet U.S. demand.
Steel Market Production Increases – ArcelorMittal announced a €58 million, four-part investment plan for its operations in Poland. The plan includes upgrades for its No. 2 BOF and its hot-dip galvanizing line, a new service center for sheet (85,000 tpy capacity), and a high speed rail mill. The projects are expected to be completed by the end of next year.
Steel Market Production Increases – Gerdau announced plans to restart their Colombian longs operations that have been idled since late 2010. Muña (135,000 tpy) will be restarted in 2012 and Tocancipá (200,000 tpy) will be restarted in 2013.
Steel Market Production Increases – Brazilian steelmaker Arvedi Metalfer has ordered a new 150,000 tpy high frequency welded tube plant that is scheduled to become operational in May, 2013.
Sources: Steel Business Briefing, SteelOrbis, American Metal Market
Steel Market Production Cuts – As of today, Italian steelmaker Ilva will have to cut back production at its Taranto plant to upgrade its pollution control equipment. It is unclear how much production will decrease and the plant is already operating at only 70% capacity.
Steel Market Production Cuts – ArcelorMittal announced today that it no longer plans to invest €138 million in its Liege plant after failing to agree with unions over job losses.
Steel Market Production Cuts – ArcelorMittal announced on Friday that its Piombino facility in Italy will idle its pickling and cold-rolling lines in the last three months of 2012.
Steel Market Production Cuts – CISA issued an update on Friday on the overhauls being carried out as of September 13. It included outages or planned outages for 13 blast furnaces (5.53 mt), 32 rebar lines (870,000 tonnes), 14 plate lines (1.185 mt), 12 HRC lines (1.305 mt), 3 CRC lines (110,000 tonnes), 5 steel strip lines (122,000 tonnes), and 2 section steel lines (65,000 tonnes).
Steel Market Production Increases – Ukrainian steelmaker Metinvest announced on Friday, that repairs to hot rolled plate mill 3000 – at subsidiary Ilyich Iron and Steel Works – has been completed. The mill was idled for 15 days and has capacity of 2.0-2.1 m tpy.
Steel Market Production Increases – Gerdau announced an investment of $253m in its Peruvian subsidiary Siderperú on Friday. The investment includes a new rolling mill for rebar and wire rod that will increase capacity from 300,000 tpy to 1.2m tpy, as well as a new EAF that will add 360,000 tpy of liquid steel, bringing total liquid steel capacity up to 1 m tpy.
Steel Market Production Increases – Chinese steelmaker Hebei Zhihang Pipeline Equipment Manufacturing, set a 2012 production target of 120,000 – 150,000 tonnes of ERW from its new mill.
Sources: Steel Business Briefing, SteelOrbis, Reuters
The spot reference price for 62% Fe iron ore cfr North China rose 14.2% to $101.60 for the week ending September 14, 2012, the largest weekly percentage increase since the first week of January, 2010. Previously, iron ore prices had fallen for five straight weeks for a total decline of 23.7% to a 34-month low of $89.00/tonne.
For the first quarter of 2012, the iron ore price averaged $141.84, and for 2Q, $139.35; this compares to an average of $176.90 for 1H 2011 and $167.59 for full-year 2011. The post-recession low was $59.10 on March 27, 2009, while the high was $190.19 on February 17, 2011.
Source: The Steel Index
Weekly domestic raw steel production for the week ending September 1, 2012 increased a nominal 0.3% to 1.817 million tons (mt) from last week’s 10-month low of 1.811 mt, but was down 3.6% year-on-year.
We would caution readers that only half of the AISI reporting companies release their weekly production in “real time” so the other half of this data is estimated – using prior months’ reported production & operating rate. What this means is that when production is changing, the weekly data is actually understating the change.
Capacity utilization increased to 73.5% this week, slightly above last week’s 73.3% but well below the year-ago level of 77.0%.
The lowest production level since the recession began was 800,000 tons for the week of December 27, 2008, while the highest level was 2.005 mt for the week of May 12, 2012. The lowest capacity utilization rate since the recession began was 33.5% for the week of December 27, 2008; the highest was 81.1% on May 12, 2012.
Source: AISI and Steel Market Intelligence
Official HRC lead times for the week ending September 9 moved to 4.1 weeks from 3.9 in the previous week with some sources reporting that lead times are even shorter.
Lead times for HDG also moved up to 6.2 from last week’s level of 6 weeks while CRC lead times remained flat week-on-week at 6.4 weeks.
Sources: The Steel Index, Steel Business Briefing
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