After US domestic merchant bar mills announced a $1.75 cwt. ($39/mt or $35/nt) transaction price increase effective December 1, there was not a relative rise in purchasing activity to get ahead of it. Nevertheless, sources tell SteelOrbis that demand and end-use activity for merchant bar has improved this month over last month, with Midwest agriculture firms investing in post-harvest machinery repairs and the East Coast material handling sector seeing a bump in activity in response to Hurricane Sandy clean-up efforts. As would be expected, decent demand for merchant bar has kept spot prices firmly in line with published prices, which will be in the range of $39.85-$41.30 cwt. ($879-$911/mt or $797-$826/nt) ex-mill, depending on size and shape.
As for imports, merchant bar offer prices from Turkey have risen by about $1.00 cwt. ($22/mt or $20/nt) in the last month, and are now in the range of $40.00-$41.00 cwt. ($882-$904/mt or $800-$820/nt) DDP loaded truck at US Gulf ports (typically, for specialty sizes and shapes). However, the increase is more attributed to rising scrap prices in Turkey than rising demand. As such, traders report not much interest in imported merchant bar at the time--although, some distributors reported putting in a few orders earlier in the month, before prices increased, due to an expected uptrend in US domestic merchant bar prices for the remainder of Q4 and into Q1 2013.