"The numbers we’d gotten down to a couple of weeks ago really haven’t continued to fall. They haven’t gone up either, but they’re remaining steady," a source at one domestic plate distributor said.

 

A second service center source agreed that plate prices had bottomed out in recent trading days. "We really haven’t seen much change at all, and that’s both in terms of pricing and indications of demand. The prices have stabilized right around that low $50 (per hundredweight) number. Right now, we’re holding steady on course," he said.

 

Domestic plate prices for most buyers are holding at around $1,011 per ton ($50.55 per cwt) f.o.b. mill, with some smaller orders clocking in at higher numbers and most multi-truckload buys able to secure a modest discount.

 

Keeping a floor under plate prices is reliable—though not gangbusters—demand from end-use sectors, particularly transportation, energy and heavy equipment, sources said.

 

"I don’t know that we’ve been slow. We’ve had fairly strong demand. Any lack of volume that I have is not because my customers aren’t buying; I’m just not selling at the number (they want)," the first service center source said.

 

Additionally, a planned outage at the Montpelier, Iowa, plate mill of Svenskt Stål AB (SSAB) beginning this month could help keep plate prices afloat. "That could tighten things up a little bit, or at least keep things at the mills pretty steady," the second service center source said.

 

But while plate prices seem to have halted their descent, a number of challenges are still on the market’s radar, particularly imports.

 

"On the prime side of it, we’re a little off, margins are down a little bit because of some of the imports that have come in," a third distributor source said.

 

Plate imports, particularly from China and South Korea, are still arriving stateside at around $870 per ton ($43.50 per cwt), making any major price hike by domestic mills unlikely, sources said.

 

Imports have been steady throughout the summer, and according to Josh Spoores, chief analyst at Cleveland-based Steel Reality, shipments could continue to hit U.S. shores well into the end of the year.

 

"The primary threat to the plate market is the current and expected high level of imports. With domestic prices $200-plus higher than foreign markets, the U.S. may continue to become an attractive target for imported plate," Spoores wrote in a research note.

 

But while some distributors and consumers might be looking to supplement some of their domestic buys with lower-priced plate, most aren’t willing to commit fully to overseas product since the lead times make a foreign dependence dangerous.

 

"I don’t think anyone is going out there buying vessel loads of plate for six months down the road even at attractive prices," the third service center source said, noting that those who are supplementing with foreign material are doing so only in small volumes. "People used to buy bargeloads of this stuff; now the importers have to sell the same barge to three or four guys."

 

In addition to imports, continued apprehension over the state of the global economy also could prove challenging for the plate market—or all markets, for that matter, sources said.

 

"Everybody sees the overall uncertainty in the world (and wonders) when is the next shoe going to drop? We have to run our business cautiously," the third distributor source said. "I think people were whacked pretty good at the end of 2008, early 2009. You stick your hand in the fire only so many times."