US wide flange beams: Domestic lead times increase

The wide flange beams market is getting increasingly tighter on supply even though US producers maintain their position to follow a stable pricing strategy. Lead times are extending, and already major beam distributors are looking for good import opportunities. However, imports are not so readily available. Yes, there are the usual low volume imports from Luxembourg, Spain, Brazil and from Taiwan's newly started program, but overall, imports have been negligible. In 2005, the entire import quantity of wide flange beams (under three H-T-S category) was only about 100'000 mt. Year 2006 didn't start with a surge of beams either. January 2006 monthly statistics show that the top five exporters of wide flange beams that month were Luxembourg with 3'720 mt, South Africa with 1'453 mt, Brazil with 1'447 mt, China with 1'407 mt, and Germany with 555 mt. The recent decision made last month by the International Trade Commission (ITC) allowing Japan and South Korea to begin immediately sending shipments to the US has left domestic beam producers anxious about how incoming import offers are going to affect the market. Again, so far, we haven't seen much of Korean or Japanese beams in the US. With the Asian markets picking up, there is hardly any chance of Asian imports flooding the North American markets. The currently limited amount of import offers we see are not that much cheaper than domestic, keeping the gap between import and home-grown pricing very narrow. Most sizes of US wide flange beams are now being offered from $30.75 cwt. to $31.00 cwt. ($615 /nt to $620 /nt or $678 /mt to $683 /mt) FOB mill. In the meantime, beam producers are taking advantage of good demand, high prices, and low import competition, and are reporting record profits. We know that Nucor is doing well, but they are not alone. The second largest beam producer, Chaparral Steel, recently announced record 3rd quarter profits, up 140 percent from 3rd quarter of previous year.