Cold-rolled coil and hot-dipped galvanized prices have started the year up, according to market participants, but mills' attempts to push prices to multi-year peaks may collide with imports that are already at their highest point in years.
American Metal Market's assessments for cold-rolled coil and hot-dipped galvanized base prices both stand at $42.50 per hundredweight ($850 per ton), up 1.19% from $42 per cwt ($840 per ton) at the end of last year and up 3.66% from $41 per cwt ($820 per ton) at the start of 2017.Cold-rolled lead times are approximately six to eight weeks, sources said. Galvanized lead times were reported in a wider range, and are out as far as 12 weeks at some mills, although that might have more to do with outages than with strong demand."If their galv line is full, you're going to get $43 [per cwt ($860 per ton)]. If it's not, you're going to get $42 [per cwt]," one distributor source said. He predicted 2018 would be a...