Cold rolled steel (CRC) in the US has risen by $ 30 to $ 1,000 per tonne pickup from the factory, and the price of hot dipped galvanized coil (HDG) has increased by $ 40 to $ 1,010 per tonne. Metallurgical enterprises refuse to take new orders for the manufacture of metal products due to a shortage of billets.
Hot Rolled Steel (HRC) prices in the US are up $ 50 to $ 870 per tonne ex-works. The spot price is the highest since early September 2018 and is up 93% from an annual low of $ 450 per tonne 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, since most of the plants will not work in January and have not yet opened their February sales due to lack of prices. Service centers, which usually trade with each other, have little 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 US mills to shutdown due to a three-day weekend of Christmas and New Years, which will slow steel production and shipments in the last two weeks of 2020.
