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Carbon plate market: Demand Sparks a Run on Plate; suppliers of steel plate are cranking out as much product as they can to meet the needs of customers ranging from manufacturers of heavy equipment to power-generating windmills.

Article Excerpt
Demand for steel plate: is as hot as the furnace it comes from

Mill and service center executives report that virtually all end-use markets for plate are doing well, which means demand is outpacing supply. Distributors, on allocation, are having a hard time getting enough metal to meet customers' needs.

"Of all the carbon steel products, plate is the strongest;' says analyst John Anton, director of the steel service at Global Insight in Washington, D.C. "Structural steel is also tight, but it is limited by the performance of the nonresidential construction sector. Plate, on the other hand, has more long-term potential. The end uses of plate are doing excellently, and should continue;' especially in the energy sector, he adds.

"Demand is every bit what we could ask for," confirms John McLaren, sales manager for Jindal United States Corp., Bay Town, Texas. "If we could produce more, we could sell more. We are maxed out."

The constrained supply is a mixed blessing for distributors servicing the steel plate market. With tight availability at the mills, more customers are knocking on service centers' doors, notes Mark Breckheimer, president of Primary Steel Inc., Middletown, Conn. But with so many mill-direct orders in the works, especially for line pipe and other energy-related applications, "there isn't a lot of plate left for service centers;' observes Bert Tenenbaum, president of Chatham Steel, Savannah, Ga.

Smaller service centers are having an even harder time gaining access to product from the more consolidated steel producers. "We are lucky to have the support of our suppliers, but we are a large buyer of plate" says Breckheimer of Primary Steel.

Plate actually has been strong for the past three years, with a small fluctuation in apparent consumption,...

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