With short supply threatening steel prices yet again, BEAMA’s Steel Products Group is on record reporting rapidly increasing raw material prices and warning future price increases will impact.
A Group spokesperson said that “Steel is now traded on the London Metal Exchange and therefore a futures market exists. In this respect, its price now behaves more like that of copper. We therefore endorse the Steel Suppliers trade association’s price warning.”
The spokesman said that “Driven by supply factors, it’s a situation progressively worsening, echoing the situation of four years ago when the price of steel rose by 50%. With the UK likely to suffer more than mainland Europe, due to fewer suppliers, industry sources believe the UK will experience a supplementary increase of up to USD 140 per tonne. The implications for contractors and manufacturers are serious.”
The Group cites many factors for steel shortages and consequent price rises. Notably, home demand from Asia, previously a low cost exporter, has doubled in ten years making the region a net importer. However, other, more fundamental factors have emerged. For instance rising fuel costs, dearth of basic feed stocks iron ore, scrap, coke.
It said that “Steel making is a cyclical activity and is currently at a ten year high. Markets are strong. The problem is not just price, some stockholders have allowed stocks to diminish, worried by the financial risk of replacing them at current prices this has an impact on availability. For manufacturers and electrical contractors, all this means uncertainty, deferments, frustration, inevitable cost penalties.”
BEAMA’s Steel Products Group members, manufacturers of steel cable tray, ladder and support systems, are reassuring customers they are doing everything possible to get supplies through the distribution system on time, and at the most competitive prices. The Group urges contractors, wholesalers and specifiers to be aware of the difficulties manufacturers are laboring under in this current climate. Member companies include well-known names: Metstrut, Tyco-Unistrut, and Legrand Electric’s Cablofil, Swift and Arena products.
