The most commonly heard spot market price for US domestic hollow structural sections (HSS) tubing continues to trend at $48.50-$50.00 cwt. ($1069-$1102/mt or $970-$1000/nt), ex-mill, but sources close to SteelOrbis report that a growing number of transactions are taking place at the bottom of that range.
“At this point, we are coming off the historical summer slowdown,” a source said. “We all want pricing to stay where it is at or go up, but with the CRU in flux, the service centers are waiting this out to see what happens. Business conditions are flat at best. Hurricane Harvey will help the domestic mills that make OCTG or line pipe if there was enough that can be downgraded to structural AS-IS. That does not help the structural mills as we will have to wait for that material to work through the market.”