The US steel sheet market was relatively quiet on Friday because many were out of the office before the Easter holiday, though one top-tier mill indicated it would be pushing higher prices after the weekend.
The top-tier mill plans to sell hot-rolled coil for at least $700/st and cold-rolled coil and galvanized substrate for at least $830/st following close of business on Friday, sources said.
This will be the second producer to quote $700/st for HRC, following AK Steel's announcement earlier this month.
Short-term supply remains tight in the market, and the producer said it had a limited amount of HRC supply open up for April delivery, which was booked almost instantly at the published list price of $685/st.
One service center executive, who said he had not experienced any major issues for short-term supply, did note some tightening of supply this week. The source said he approached a mill on Monday looking for additional tonnage that a customer had requested and the mill indicated April delivery. However, at the end of the week he went back to the same mill for a separate purchase and was told that delivery would be slated for the first week of June, but delivery was likely in the last week of May.
For CRC, one buyer reported an offer from a producer at $820/st for delivery in the first week of July.
The buyer said that he thought that recent run up in prices was likely 70 percent attributed to supply and 30 percent attributed to demand, but said that his mill representative thought it was closer to 50:50. He added that he did not even specify a tonnage because the price and lead time was not attractive compared with other purchasing options.
One service center source said he believed the market may be underestimating the impact of the recent supply issues.
"Every day there is another supply issue," he said, adding that people are being "lulled to sleep" believing that this issue will resolve itself sooner rather than later.
He noted the "ripple effect" that these issues were causing as "lead times are marching out."
The source said that pricing from one major integrated producer was firmly at $680/st for HRC, regardless of order size.
Platts maintained its HRC and CRC assessments at $675-685/st and $800-815/st, respectively, on Friday. All prices are normalized to a Midwest (Indiana) ex-works basis.
