Stainless pipe and tube stayed relatively flat over the course of 2020 and that pattern has continued in 2021 with just one month of actual data, one month of licenses and one month of an import projection. A better than average recovery in the manufacturing sector and some improvement in the oil and gas sector is giving us cautious optimism for this sector for 2021. This is certainly not to say that we are expecting a banner year. Extended lead times and higher steel prices in all sectors including stainless, has caused and is causing some forward buying for fear of missing orders in this growing demand cycle. It is not that there is an inventory restocking going on – prices are too high for that – but instead of ordering for demand that is, for example, 12 weeks out, buyers are ordering for demand that is 16 weeks out or more. While that sounds like inventory restocking, we don’t believe it is. Price is the tempering agent at work here as everywhere we look it is going up and will most likely hold this pattern until the end of Q2 and maybe a bit further.
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