International Steel Market Roundup -- January 2004

摘要

As expected, US prices continue to creep up. Order intake at the steelmakers remains steady. Distributors need to fill holes that have developed in warehouse inventories. There are signs that industrial production has begun to turn around. However, service centres still report difficulty in passing on the mill increases to their customers. The withdrawal of the Section 201 tariffs has not caused too much immediate concern about imports, given the state of the economy, the weakness of the Dollar and the disincentive of escalating ocean freight rates. Several domestic mills are experiencing supply side problems which are causing late deliveries. There is fresh concern over the level of stocks in Japan. Local inventories of strip products, at end October 2003, rose by 2.6 percent compared with the previous month. The market had been expecting a decrease. However, quayside warehouse stocks of imported flat products fell by 9.5 percent from September - the first decline in 6 months. Demand from the auto and construction machinery sectors is good and export enquiries are still encouraging.