More of Liberty Speciality Steels' alloy surcharges have fallen than have risen month-on-month for December 2017, although the average increase is stronger than the average decrease, Kallanish notes. The company had changed its method of presenting its monthly alloy surcharges as from November. These are now reported by product only instead of by alloying element and product as previously done.

Presentation of the scrap surcharge remains the same. The new surcharges are valid from 3-31 December, the UK-based steelmaker confirms.

In the revised format the company lists 183 grades of alloy steels. For December the alloy surcharges for a total of 88 of these grades have increased, whilst 95 have fallen.

The steels are split into 21 categories with varying numbers of alloy grades in each. Whilst surcharges for the majority of items have fallen in pure numerical terms, the average percentage decrease for those having fallen is smaller than the average percentage increase for those which have risen.

To illustrate this, in the case of 34 Aircraft specification alloys, 22 have risen by between 6.6% to 17.9% month-on-month whilst 12 have fallen by between -0.2% to -0.9%. Although in this group more surcharges have risen than fallen, this pattern with the percentages is repeated throughout the majority of the categories.

As a rule of thumb, surcharges for higher nickel content alloys have seen the strongest increase.

Liberty's scrap surcharge for the period is reduced slightly to £200/tonne ($270/t) from November’s £207/t.