US sheet steel pricing is still slowly ticking down due to lacklustre demand and abundant supply, market sources tell Kallanish.

One buyer says $440/short ton hot-rolled is no longer strictly for well-connected, high-volume players. “Once they [… mills] start offering it to the volume buyers, it starts trickling to everyone else,” he says. Some buyers with few tons to offer are probably still paying $460/st, he said, but they are no longer the majority.

“I think they're still using $460/st as a list price,” he adds. “There might be somebody, somewhere that might still be paying $460/st.”

A service centre executive calls $440/st “easily attainable,” particularly if you are looking to buy about 1,000st. He adds that $460/st is more of a truckload-volume price.

Pricing appears to be stuck in a slow spiral downward until either domestic capacity comes offline or the three on-going trade cases against HRC, cold-rolled and hot-dipped galvanized seriously curb import levels, he says. The demand side of the equation is being propped up by automotive and construction, but that’s not enough to offset losses in agriculture and general end-user buying.

“There’s nothing good right now,” he comments.

A mill source pegs cold-rolled pricing at about $560-580/st, displaying slightly more strength than hot-rolled but still eroding.

Kallanish pegs US HRC pricing at $440-460/st and US CRC pricing at $560-580/st, both ex-works.