Research

Forecasts and market analysis based on price assessments from Fastmarkets MB and Fastmarkets AMM

Change font size:   

North American Steel

The new issue of the Market Tracker is now available.

You are now able to access this new issue in the Fastmarkets Dashboard. Here you will find:

  • Pre-built forecast market pages containing forecast charts and articles for your subscription
  • Download current and the last year archive of the Tracker and Data Zone spreadsheets in the Reports Library
  • Compare latest and historical physical prices
Please login using your existing Metal Bulletin Research login & password

You can alternatively continue to access the Tracker until 2nd April 2024 from this page.

North American Steel Market Tracker provides detailed analysis and forecasts for the US, Canadian and Mexican steel industries, from the raw materials sector through to the markets for finished steel products. 

Latest Issue

More analysis...

Your monthly 12 page report includes:

  • Key trends in steel production, consumption, inventory and trade in the US, Canada and Mexico.
  • US domestic and import price forecasts for the next year for both flat and long products.
  • HR export price comparison table, with Japanese, Latin American and European export prices.
  • Coverage of steel products including HR coil, CR coil, HDG, plate, wire rod, sections, rebar and merchant bars.
  • NEW: Dedicated Mexican and Canadian steel flat and long products analysis and carbon steel market summaries.
  • Assessment of developments in the raw material markets, focusing on scrap, pig iron, DRI, and bulk alloys.
  • NEW: Key North American steel market indicators with quick & clear guide to the important market developments.
  • NEW: Margin analysis comparing HR vs CR, HR vs Busheling, Structurals vs Shredded scrap, and Rebar vs Shredded scrap.

 

Independent data including:

  • North American steel and steelmaking raw material, prices with 1-year forecasts and history from 2004.
  • Extensive database of US carbon steel market summary data.
  • NEW: Canadian and Mexican steel production, import, export and apparent consumption data.
  • US apparent steel consumption by product with 10-year history.  

 

All subscribers are eligible for regular individual consultations with the editor of the report.

      

Amy Bennett

Amy joined Metal Bulletin Research (MBR) in 1997. Amy has direct responsibility for MBR’s research into the global ferro-alloys sector and North American steel markets. She is MBR’s principal consultant, with overall editorial responsibility for MBR’s steel monthlies, as well as for MBR’s long-term projections for the ferro-alloy and North American steel sectors. In addition, she has presented papers at all the leading steel and ferro-alloy conferences including those held by Metal Bulletin and AMM, the ICDA, IMnI, Infacon, and the Institute for Supply Management Steel Buyers’ Forum.

After graduating from the Pennsylvania State University with a BS in Mineral Economics, Amy joined Resource Strategies, Inc. as a Research and Marketing Analyst, focusing on the bulk ferro-alloy and steelmaking raw materials industries. She then joined CRU International as a Metals Consultant, continuing to build expertise in the steel and ferro-alloys sector before joining MBR.


Market Brief


The two main classes of finished steel products are flat products and long products.  The markets for these products in the USA, Canada, and Mexico are analyzed in depth in North American Steel Market Tracker.

Within the USA, the highest concentration of steel plants is located east of the Mississippi River, however, there are steelmakers located across the country. There are also numerous steel producers located in Canada and Mexico.  Steel products are consumed in North America in a broad range of applications including, but not limited to, transportation, construction, energy, machinery and equipment, appliances, and the defense sector. 

Flat products

Flat products are usually rolled down from a steel slab cast directly from molten steel, but some narrow flat products can be produced from blooms.  The slabs are either passed through a single hot rolling unit, a “reversing mill”, moving back and forth, until they are reduced to the desired thickness.  More commonly the slab passes through a series of rollers arranged in line (“in tandem”) that reduce its thickness progressively.  The slabs may then be rolled down further in a cold-rolling process. 

The main categories of flat-rolled products are:

  • Hot-rolled (HR) coil or sheet produced on a tandem mill, which may be used directly by customers in a plain or a coated (galvanized) form or subjected to cold rolling.
  • Cold-rolled (CR) coil.  All extra working of metal tends to improve its physical condition and working cold metal generally strengthens it and improves its surface finish.    
  • Coated coil, which is usually based on CR coil but may also use HR coil as its starting point.  It may be only metal coated, or coated with both metal and organic material, whether paint or plastic.  The most common metal coating processes are hot-dip galvanizing, which requires the coil to pass through a bath of molten metal, and electrolytic galvanizing, which requires the coil to be held in an electrolytic bath while an electric current deposits metal on its surface.  Zinc is the most common coating metal, but there are processes that use zinc mixed with aluminum or nickel and other metals.  Tinplate is very thin CR steel coated electrolytically with tin metal.
  • Plate.  This term applies to thicker gauges of steel that are clearly “flat” and not “long” in character but they are sometimes classified separately from other flat products.  The heaviest and highest quality plate is produced in a reversing mill.  Frequent passes improve the physical structure of the steel.  However, tandem hot rolling mills can be designed to produce coil of moderate thickness that can compete with plate in less demanding applications. 

All of these flat products can be further shaped in a steelwork’s downstream fabricating units to produce forms of pipes and tubes for gas, liquid or slurry transmission or structural tubes and hollow sections.  The largest and highest quality transmission pipes are usually made from reversing mill plate, but a large proportion of ordinary pipes and tubes use HR coil from tandem HR lines.  

Flat steel products are used in steel manufactures of all kinds.  Car bodies are among the most visible as well as the biggest users of high quality CR coil that has been galvanized.  They need very high quality coil because the complex shapes of car bodies require high formability and the exposure of car bodies to the weather requires high resistance to corrosion.  Lower specification galvanized coil is familiar as a common building material, especially in the simple roll-formed shapes, the corrugations that give steel building sheet extra strength.  Painted and plastic-coated steel is used as cladding, inside and outside buildings, and for doors and gates.

Ordinary car and truck wheels use HR coil, which is also visible as street furniture and road barriers.  Plate is widely used in the construction industry.  A special patterned form, sometimes called “checker plate” marked with a raised pattern, provides safety flooring and stairs seen in factories and on fire escapes.  Heavy-duty plate is used for ships and earth-moving equipment and in high performance structures such as bridges.    

Long products

Long products are rolled from the first outputs of a mill, semi-manufactures, billets and blooms that are cast from the emerging molten steel.  Billets usually have a square cross-section (some, used to produce seamless tubes have a round cross-section), while blooms usually have an oblong cross-section.  These semi-manufactures pass through a hot rolling line.  Some higher performance products are treated further on a cold rolling and finishing line. 

The main categories of long products are:

  • Bars, of round, square or oblong cross-section; the simplest are the plain or deformed bars used directly to reinforce concrete (rebars); other bars may be machined, stamped or shaped for final use
  • Rod; the simplest may be used directly or welded in a mesh as another form of concrete reinforcement; other grades may be machined or shaped, or drawn to be made into wire or wire products such as nails
  • Structural shapes; this term usually refers to shapes of open profile such as angles and channels and heavier products such as “I” beams and “H” beams

A high proportion of long products are used by the construction industry, but some long products, usually in higher performance categories, are used for structural and mechanical (moving) parts of machinery and general manufactures.