U.S. Steel Mill Shipments Dropped by 0.9% in January

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The recent report published by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) indicates that steel shipments by the US mills made a weak start to the New Year. The January 2018 steel mill shipments were down marginally from the same month a year before. However, when compared with the month before, the U.S steel mill shipments during the first month of the year were up modestly.

As per AISI data, the U.S steel mill shipments totaled 7.636 million net tons in January 2018. This is slightly lower by 0.9% from the shipments recorded during January last year. The January 2017 steel shipments by U.S. mills had totaled 7.708 million net tons. However, month-on-month comparison shows that mill steel shipments were modestly up by 4.2% from 7.328 million net tons in December 2017.

Upon comparison with the prior month, several products witnessed significant jump in shipment volumes. The shipments of hot dipped galvanized sheet and strip surged higher by 11%, whereas cold rolled sheets shipments were up by 9%. The other product to witness notable jump in shipments was hot rolled sheets, whose shipments were up by 3% compared with December 2017.

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Meantime, the domestic raw steel production during the week ending March 8, 2018 totaled 1.834 million net tons. The capability utilization rate of US steel mills was 78.7%. The current week production represents 5% jump from the same period in 2017 and 2.9% jump from the prior week. The district wise crude steel production during the week in thousands of net tons is as follows: North East- 213, Great Lakes-655, Midwest-169, Southern-724 and Western-73. The year-to-date production was down marginally from 15.505 million net tons in 2017 to 15.374 million net tons in 2018.

It must be noted that the cumulative steel shipments by the US mills had totaled 90.89 million net tons during the entire year 2017, surging higher by almost 5% when compared with the shipments of 86.53 million in 2016.