US domestic rebar prices were up slightly this week on reports of better demand as scrap prices rose, even as wire rod values remained flat week on week, despite the ongoing outage at Liberty Steel’s wire and rod production facility in Peoria, Illinois, market insiders told SteelOrbis this week.
And while wire rod pricing has remained steady over the past several weeks, insiders say long steel prices overall are likely to trend higher as the markets move further into the 4th quarter.
“Nobody really knows whether the Liberty plant will be back in March as planned,” said one rebar market insider. “At best, there seems to be quite a bit of skepticism out there.”
In the weekly rebar spot markets, domestic supply on an FOB mill basis is assessed with most transactions discussed at $36.00-37.00 ($720-740/nt or $793.67-815.71/mt), on average $36.50/cwt., ($753/nt or $804.69/mt), up $0.50/cwt ($10/nt or $11/mt) from seven days ago.
November shredded scrap in the Ohio Valley settled at $385-390/gt ($391-396/mt), up about $13/gt ($13.21/mt) from October settled values. Ohio Valley Busheling scrap settled up $18/gt ($18.29/mt) from October at $390-415/gt ($396-$421/mt), SteelOrbis data shows.
And, even though Liberty Steel’s production still remains unavailable, and Mount Airy, North Carolina-based InSteel announced earlier this week the closure of its Warren, Ohio facility by the end of November, most spot market wire rod transactions were reported steady this week at $39.00-41.00/cwt ($780-820/nt or $860-904/mt), or an average of $40.00/cwt ($800/nt or $882/mt).
“For wire rod, the markets have seen quite a bit of price increases come out of the mills, but none recently from Nucor,” the rebar insider added. “Because of that, the increases haven’t really been accepted by the marketplace, however, in the Northeast markets at least, scrap prices are expected to continue higher, and all it will really take is one really good storm to see a good spike in scrap prices.”
Insteel Industries Inc. said in a press release Monday that the closure of the Warren plant at the end of the month will cause the elimination of 35 employees. “Given the low capacity utilization levels at our Warren facility and the dim prospects for improvement, we believe this action is essential to reducing our operating costs and strengthening our competitive position,” President and CEO of Insteel, H.O. Woltz III said.
Market insiders cautioned that even though InSteel plans to make up for the Warren production shortfall by moving the manufacturing to Insteel’s remaining welded wire reinforcement facilities, wire rod pricing could move higher near term as increasing production capacity in the 4th quarter could be tricky, given more limited run times during the upcoming holiday season and recent increases in US scrap pricing.