Beam through January 11^th totaled 3,363 tons, down 36,667 tons or 92.7% from last January’s total of 40,030 tons. Overall beam import licensed tons in 2017 were lower than in 2016. The 2016 total was 568,065 tons 26,934 tons or 4.7% less than the 541,131 ton level in 2017. For the year, wide flange beams accounted for 66.8% and standard I beams made up the remaining 33.2% on an annual basis.

Figure 1 shows the monthly total beam licenses for both 2016 and 2017, (and January 2018) as reported by the Steel Import Monitoring System (SIMA). Beam licenses to date were very light in January vs. recent history.

Figure 2 charts beam licenses through January 11^th for 2018, along with January 2017 by country. Thus far only Korea (647 tons), Canada (1,370 tons), Spain (59 tons) and Mexico (1,248 tons) licensed any volume in January.

Taking a look at the annual total licensed tonnages for 2016 and 2017 totals, we see that; South Korea’s license requests for 2017 totaled 157,368 tons, 6.0% greater than the 148,435 tons in 2016. Luxembourg’s license requests for 2017 were 130,245, up 13,871 tons 11.9% over the 116,374 licensed in 2016. In 2017, Spain licensed 95,109 tons, down 15.9% from its 2016 level of 113,157 tons. The three country total of Korea, Luxembourg and Spain accounted for 70.7% of the 2017 beam licenses, up from the 66.5% share these three countries had in 2016.

Mexico 2017 total license requests were 27,962 down 18.0% from its 34,112 tons in 2016. The United Kingdom 2017 license total was 36,121 tons, up 73.4% y/y, from its 2016 total of 20,827 tons. Canada’s 2017 total was 24,500 tons, 6.9% more than its 2016 total of 22,914 tons. Taiwan had a 2017 license total of 22,286 tons was down 9.6%, from 2016s total of 24,652 tons. In 2017 Russia only licensed 302 tons compared to 34,990 tons in 2016. Germany total license requests for 2017 were for 13,905 tons, down 32.0% from 2016s total of 20,436 tons. The United Arab Emirates 2017 license total was 19,292 tons, 32.2% higher than its 2016 total of 14,590 tons.

Four additional countries combined beam license requests totaled 13,576 tons in 2017, down 10.3% from the 15,162 tons in 2016.

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