By Paul Ploumis
July 07, 2017 04:00:40 AM
ALBANY (Scrap Monster): According to the most recent Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) data released by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), the U.S. steel import permit applications for the month of June this year declined by 3.7% when matched with the previous month. The steel import applications for the month totaled 3,502,000 net tons (NT). The import permits tons had totaled 3,637,000 net tons in May. Meantime, the import permits were up marginally by 2% when compared with the May preliminary imports total of 3,434,000 net tons.
The import permit tonnage of finished steel totaled 2,724,000 net tons in June this year, modestly higher by 5.8% when matched with the preliminary imports total of 2,574,000 net tons in May this year.
The finished steel products which recorded significant increase in import permits during June 2017 when compared to May preliminary import were reinforcing bars (up 190%), standard rail (up 30%), heavy structural shapes (up 30%), sheets and strip all other metallic coatings (up 26%), hot rolled sheets (up 23%), structural pipe and tubing (up 20%), mechanical tubing (up 15%), cold rolled sheets (up 12%) and oil country goods (up 11%).
In June, the largest number of import permit applications were for South Korea (381,000 NT, up 16% from May preliminary), Turkey (319,000 NT, up 107%), Japan (139,000 NT, up 10%), Taiwan (132,000 NT, up 84%) and Germany (123,000 NT, down 13%).
The steel products which recorded significant year-to-date (YTD) increases when compared with the corresponding half-yearly period in 2016 were oil country goods (up 237%), cold rolled sheets (up 36%), standard pipe (up 33%), sheets and strip all other metallic coatings (up 29%), line pipe (up 29%), mechanical tubing (up 27%), hot rolled bars (up 24%), sheets and strip hot dipped galvanized (up 24%) and tin plate (up 15%).
For the first half-yearly period of 2017, the largest overseas suppliers of finished steel to the US were South Korea (1,921,000 NT, down 1% from the same period in 2016), Turkey (1,461,000 NT, up 22%) and Japan (790,000 NT, down 9%).
The weekly raw steel production by the country declined marginally by 0.2% during the week ending on July 1st, 2017.
The total domestic raw steel output during the week ending July 1st was 1,717,000 net tons. The AISI data indicates that the US raw steel production has dropped slightly by 0.7% during the week. This is in comparison with the previous week (ie., the week ended June 24th) production figures of 1,729,000 net tons. However, the weekly production has recorded marginal increase of 1.5% in comparison with production of 1,743,000 net tons during same week the previous year.
The capability utilization rate of US steel makers was 73.6% during the week ended July 1st, 2017. The capacity utilization rate has reduced marginally when compared with 74.2% during the previous week (ie., the week ending June 24th). Also, capacity utilization rate declined when compared with the rate of 74.5% during same week the previous year.
The crude steel production by various districts during the week was as follows:- North East (204,000 NT), Great Lakes (668,000 NT), Midwest (168,000 NT), Southern (608,000 NT) and Western (69,000 NT).
The year-to-date crude steel output through July 1, 2017 totaled 45,070,000 net tons, up by nearly 2.1% when matched with the output of 44,125,000 net tons during the same period last year. The capacity utilization rate during the period stood higher at 74.4% as compared with the rate of 72.6% during the corresponding period last year.
