THE STAINLESS PIPE AND TUBE MARKET

摘要

In a product line dominated byimport supply we wondered to what levelimport volumes could fall. Well we did nothave to wait long, assuming July licensesare anything near correct, to get ouranswer. The single month of June seems tobe the drop off month in imports and nowthings are back to near normal. We mightadd the need to watch again in August asKorea will hit their quota July based onnumbers available today. Looking at thatquota it is apparent that there will be a needto replace about 1,700 tons/month for thebalance of the year to make up for theshortfall. The majority of the Korean importsis welded allowing for somewhat easiersourcing. The largest area of import is theGulf coast followed by the West coast sothose regions could see a short period oftight supply. We do not think there is goingto be a problem replacing supply overall.The categories, HTS codes, we see Koreamost active are in the smaller OD’s, lessthan 4.5” OD with Nickel contents greaterthan 0.5% but less 24%. These categoriesspan a fairly wide range of end uses thatalso includes many energy products. In ourview it is not an impossible product toreplace.