Huge, Quick and Volatile Price Hikes Stun Fabricators and Sting Industry

摘要

The most severe cost crisis in living memory has hit fabricators and contractors that work with anything made of steel. And nobody saw it coming. Struc-turals, plate, rebar, mesh, studs, ductwork, guardrails, fences ― if it was a product made with steel and you had a fixed-price contract to deliver it during the first quarter, you were in trouble. And the contractual ripples are expected to be felt for many months to come. Reinforcing bar prices made the first move last spring while structural steel prices began moving up in the fourth quarter of 2003. But the unprecedented, across-the-board price increases that followed during the first quarter of this year stunned the industry. "If this trend continues, it has the potential of putting the majority of fabricators in the U.S. out of business ― and I mean the majority," says Robert Abramson, president of Interstate Iron Works Corp., Whitehouse, N.J. Several other fabricators agree that this is not an extreme statement.