USA HRC Spot Price Hovering Around $1,215/ton
WSD’s canvassing of market participants early this week shows a reported transaction range for US-made hot-rolled coil of $1,200-$1,230 per ton—depending on order size and tonnage—putting the mid-range spot price at $1,215/ton. “Supply remains very limited as demand continues to be buoyant,” a Midwest service center buyer said.
A distributor in the southern US told WSD that some mill offers are as high as $1,240 per ton with lead times extending into early-mid November. Compounding the situation, several mill maintenance outages are slated to start soon. Inventory levels are still lean.
Nucor raised its weekly HRC Consumer Spot Price (CSP) to $1,185 per ton on Monday, up just $5, “but it’s almost impossible to book tons elsewhere at that Nucor price,” said the distributor, “and whatever tons Nucor might have, they go pretty fast.”
A steel trader told WSD that prices for imported material have also increased just recently, with Houston-area HRC now at about $1,060 per ton, delivered and duty-paid (DDP). “Nucor has previously acknowledged to be monitoring the import situation, so it’s interesting to note its CSP ($1,185) is $125 above the import price,” he said. “But a truer differential would be about $150-$180 per ton.”
Meanwhile, early Tuesday trading of HRC futures on the CME showed gains of $5-$13 per ton across all contracts through January. September was at $1212/ton and October at a high of $1222/ton—nearly converging with the latest reported physical market spot pricing.
WSD Take: Pricing in the US market continues to rise above $1,200 per ton as we enter September, with lead times remaining long and spot supply remaining tight. There remains the possibility of additional increases, as transactional tons appear to be well above the $1,200 mark for the time being.
At the same time, uncertainty around the USW negotiations is easing. With Cleveland-Cliffs and US Steel appearing to approach new deals, the risk of integrated capacity being taken offline by a work stoppage looks increasingly diminished; WSD expects a deal will likely be reached in the coming weeks, ahead of the extended October 1 deadline.
Meanwhile, the market will continue to battle perceptions of tightening availability as maintenance
season moves into full force in the coming weeks. However, as WSD has been warning for some time, the opportunity for increased imports is becoming a reality. Through the first 25 days of August, flat-rolled imports reached 566,001 metric tons, or roughly 623,900 net tons. On a sheet-product basis, that represents about 8.5 million tons of steel sheet imports on an annualized rate in August, up nearly 3 million tons from a low of 5.5 million tons annualized in March. WSD expects this level of imports to be sustained throughout the remainder of the year as buyers seek additional tons amid generally low inventories and limited availability.
As additional domestic capacity comes into the market over the coming six months and import tonnage builds, conditions in the US market should begin to loosen. We expect that pricing by early 2027 could begin to fall well below current monumental rates.