The chief executive of US steelmaker Steel Dynamics (SDI) said that fears of US steel oversupply following completion of new expansion projects are overblown.
SDI chief executive Mark Millett today said reports about the building of new steel capacity and a possible oversupply — what one analyst has called "Steel-mageddon" — has been overstated.
"The expansion sensationalism going on currently … I think is a little erroneous," Millett said. "One has to break that down into its product and sectors … and you'll see that hardly any sectors are affected but flat-rolled."
Millett said new US flat-rolled capacity will increase only by 6mn-7mn st, far below the 11.9mn st low end estimate by the Steel-mageddon analyst.
SDI is currently building a new 3mn st/yr flat-rolled mill in Sinton, Texas, near Corpus Christi. Millett has said in the past that he considers the new mill "an import killer."
Other steelmakers such as Nucor, US Steel, Big River Steel and North Star Bluescope have all begun expansions in the wake of the US imposing a 25pc tariff on steel imports in March 2018.
Millett was speaking as part of a panel put together by the Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) to provide an update on the US steel industry.
Millett and his colleagues on the panel, Dave Sumoski of Nucor and Tracy Porter of Commercial Metals Company (CMC), all said imports remain an issue, and pointed to the US Department of Commerce's recently initiated circumvention review on steel rebar imports from Mexico as a necessary step to keep the playing field level and fair.
They hinted that more such reviews could be coming.
"I think there will be a lot more of these things uncovered as time goes on," Porter said.
US steel imports through the first eight months of 2019 have fallen by 13pc to 18.8mn t compared to the same period of 2018, according to the Department of Commerce. Flat-rolled products like HRC and coated steel had the biggest declines, with HRC imports down by 26pc to 1.94mn t and coated steel imports down by 19pc to 2.19mn t.
