Markets in USA & Canada

摘要

Steelmakers have tried to persuade their customers that they would have to accept more rounds of price increases, beginning in the second quarter, to enable them to recoup the much increased costs of raw materials in 2005 supply contracts. The iron ore rise of 71 percent plus is only the most egregious in a list including energy, metallurgical coal and ferro-alloys. Customers looked at their own businesses, and held back from buying. After weeks of lifeless order books and low levels of end-user interest, US coil prices have dropped significantly. Final figures for 2004 show just how strong the general economy was in the USA, especially in the important to steelmakers. For example, spending on machine tools - an indicator of both activity and investment in metallic engineering - topped 3,000m dollars, a 43.6 percent advance on 2003. The final AISI figures for the year, published in late February, show how good 2004 was for US steelmakers' sales - deliveries were 5.8 percent higher than in 2003. Service centres took 4.6 percent more than in the previous year, the vehicle industry and the construction sector both increased off-take by 4.9 percent, steel tonnage going to the tools and industrial equipment sectors - within which stands the machine tool business - rose by 20.2 percent.