Based on the Commerce Department’s most recent Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) data, the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) reported that steel import permit applications for the month of September totaled 2,739,000 net tons (NT).
This was an 8.7 percent decrease from the 3,002,000 permit tons recorded in August and a 7.6 percent decrease from the August preliminary imports total of 2,966,000 NT. Import permit tonnage for finished steel in September was 1,980,000, down 1.5 percent from the preliminary imports total of 2,010,000 in August. For the first nine months of 2018 (including September SIMA permits and August preliminary data), total and finished steel imports were 26,578,000 NT and 20,188,000 NT, down 10.6 percent and 12.1 percent, respectively, from the same period in 2017. The estimated finished steel import market share in September was 21 percent and is 24 percent year-to-date (YTD).
Finished steel imports with large increases in September permits vs. the August preliminary included light shapes bars (up 103 percent), hot rolled sheets (up 35 percent), plates in coils (up 24 percent), sheets and strip all other metallic coatings (up 22 percent), standard pipe (up 19 percent), and cold rolled sheets (up 12 percent).
In September, the largest finished steel import permit applications for offshore countries were for South Korea (239,000 NT, up 41 percent from August preliminary), Turkey (167,000 NT, up 40 percent), Germany (120,000 NT, up 7 percent), Taiwan (103,000 NT, up 27 percent) and Japan (94,000 NT, down 8 percent). Through the first nine months of 2018, the largest offshore suppliers were South Korea (2,340,000 NT, down 21 percent from the same period last year), Japan (1,068,000 NT, down 14 percent) and Turkey (1,007,000 NT, down 49 percent).
Published in the November 2018 Edition