US mills' lead times for steel plate extended again in the week through Thursday from the one prior, amid a mix of service center, original equipment manufacturer and project orders.
Lead times for as-rolled plate are averaging 6.88 weeks compared with just 5.98 weeks during the prior week. The average also excludes an outlying mill's lead times that jumped from January 17 to early March over the past week. If that mill's lead times are included, the as-rolled plate average increases to 7.51 weeks.
A service center source said that lead times are definitely moving out amid a lot of OEM activity. Also, service canter inventories were lean and need to be replenished, with that restocking helping to temporarily increase demand.
Service center plate inventories fell by 5.7% to 781,300 st in November from 828,700 st in October, according to Metals Service Center Institute data.
Months of supply held by service centers dropped by 8.8% to 2.7 in November from October.
A second service center source also said mill booking were solid and spread out between OEM, project and service center orders.
Normalized plate lead times averaged 7.89 weeks, compared with 8.05 weeks in the prior week.
Quench-and-tempered plate lead times extended to 8.5 weeks, compared with 7.97 weeks previously.
The increase in lead times is lending support to the $130/st worth of price increases announced by domestic mills over the past 45 days. S&P Global Platts A36 commodity grade plate assessment was calculated lower by $1.50/st to $684/st ex-works southeastern US mill on Thursday from the prior day. But despite that decline day on day, plate prices have risen by $74.5/st or 12.2% since the beginning of November.
