STEEL NEWS

Steel shortage in the US leads to further price increases

Hot rolled coil (HRC) spot prices in the United States continued to climb this week, and local steel mills announced their intention to raise prices in January 2021 amid increasingly limited supply.

HRC's weekly Argus Domestic Index is up $ 50 to $ 870 a tonne ex-works this week. The lead times for rental orders remained unchanged at 8-9 weeks. The spot price is the highest since early September 2018 and is up 93% from an annual low of $ 450 per tonne recorded in mid-August.

Steelmaker Nucor plans to raise coil prices to $ 960 per tonne at its Berkeley, South Carolina plant, according to market sources.

Many market participants complained that they could not find free volumes of hot rolled steel, as most of the mills will not work in January and have not yet opened their February sales due to lack of prices. Service centers, which usually trade among themselves, have little rolled metal to meet new orders, let alone sell to other service centers.

More and more market participants warned that a shortage of steel billets could halt production in the next few weeks. Many expect U.S. steelmakers to shutdown due to the three-day Christmas and New Year holidays, which will slow steel production and shipments in the last two weeks of 2020.