USA HRC Spot Price Range Bulges to $1,240-$1,260/ton
Demand continues to be brisk in the US market, but availability of spot hot-rolled coil (HRC) “is more constrained than ever,” one market participant told WSD early this week. The situation now means upper-end HRC spot prices of around $1,260 per ton, with the low-end pegged at $1,240 — for a midpoint of $1,250 per ton.
“Mills’ outages have kicked in and that’s fueled buying interest,” the steel distributor explained, “but almost all mill November order books are full, and some even through the end of the year.”
A service center buyer added: “If you buy strictly spot, you got to hope a hole opens up in a mill rolling schedule—because mills are prioritizing contract business. Even if you manage to place a spot order, it likely won’t be for a lot of tons.”
Nucor on Monday increased its Consumer Spot Price (CSP) for HRC by another $10 to $1,230 per ton. “In reality, the Nucor CSP now serves as the absolute floor (of the range). But $1,240 and up to $1,260 is where most other mills are at,” said another distributor.
Elsewhere, HRC futures on the CME all saw settlements for the November through March contracts of more than $1,300 per ton on Monday. “There’s a lot of sustained, positive confidence in this market,” a steel trader noted.
Meanwhile, ferrous scrap buying for October is under way. Nothing has settled yet, but most market players are expecting the mills’ outages to keep prime grade pricing unchanged.
Some scrap sellers may try to push for higher prime prices, but if anything, secondary grades could see slight increases, a scrap market participant noted.
WSD Take:
Imports are on the upswing. September data show sheet product imports running at 7.7 million net tons annualized, up from 7.3 million tons annualized the prior month and from a low of 5.5 million tons annualized during the first quarter of 2026.
The bigger story is slab. Slab imports surged to 8.7 million net tons annualized in September, up from 7.4 million tons annualized the prior month. That pace is more than double 2025, when the US imported about 4.1 million net tons of slab, and more than double the first half of 2026, when slab imports averaged roughly 327,000 net tons per month. A surge of that size points to a significant increase in re-rolling production at US mills over the last several months, adding domestic sheet supply on top of rising finished imports.
Absent further interference from Washington, WSD expects sheet imports to continue on their upward trajectory, likely running at 8.0–8.5 million tons annualized through the final three months of the year. Combined with the slab-fueled increase in re-rolled output, that represents a meaningful upswing in supply that should begin to ease the tight supply-demand balance that has supported high HRC prices, even as mill outages keep spot availability constrained in the near term.
The full pricing effect, however, remains difficult to see through. As noted last week, domestic mills have already lodged complaints through the AISI and SMA, and the possibility that the administration bends to that lobbying with additional or targeted tariffs on incoming imports cannot be ruled out. Should that happen, the relief that imports and re-rolling are beginning to provide could be cut short.