OREANDA-NEWS. It was a rough winter in the US this year, even more so for the domestic steel industry, which saw prices on its bellwether product, hot-rolled coil (HRC), decrease by about \$200 a short ton, or roughly 30%.

Arriving in tandem with belated spring weather, long-awaited HRC price increases were announced this week, providing hope for a turnaround in the collapsed market.

Like the green shoots of spring, the mill price increases are small – on the order of \$20/st. But poking up from the barren landscape of the past few months they are being seen as welcome relief by sheet producers and distributors alike.

HRC prices are now expected to have bottomed out at \$440/st, down from about \$640/st last November.

Steel has always been a cyclical business, but it now seems the cycles are more persistent. US mills were able to keep their domestic sheet prices higher than global prices for two years, defying gravity as never before. But that meant increased imports of lower priced steel, which oversupplied the market and contributed mightily to the months-long deterioration of domestic prices.

Now many market players, while happy to hear prices could be moving up instead of down, are saying the rebound could be a slog as well.