American steel supplies fell 1%

US steel mills shipped 8.142 million tonnes net during May this year. That was down marginally 0.9% from shipments in the same month in 2018, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). It should be noted that in the same month a year ago, the mills shipped 8.210 million tons. Shipments registered a slight increase of 1.1% over the previous month. Steel deliveries in April 2019 by American plants amounted to only 8,056 million tons.

Several products reported significant changes in their shipments in May this year from the previous month. Compared to April 19, shipments of cold-rolled sheet in May this year decreased by 4%. Shipments of galvanized sheet and hot-dip galvanized strips decreased by 2% compared to the previous month. Also, according to AISI, shipments of hot rolled sheet decreased by 1%.

YTD steel shipments from US plants are up 3.0% year-on-year to 40.505 million net tonnes through May. This compares to the delivery of 39.316 million net tonnes in January-May 2018.

Meanwhile, weekly U.S. steel production increased slightly in the week ended July 6, 2019 from the previous week. Domestic steel production in the United States for the week ended July 6, 2019 was 1.847 million tonnes at a 79.4% capacity utilization rate.