Dear Customers (and future Customers),

Today I thought I would share some difficulties we are all facing, such as the pricing increases in the past few months along with the continuing upward pricing we are still seeing. How do we tell our customers the pricing of raw materials is rising and that items such as finished trims, roofing coil, trailers, facades, commercial window frames, etc will be increasing as a result?

It’s a discussion that is difficult, but one that needs to be communicated so our customers can understand what is happening in the marketplace. On February 16th, the CRU Hot rolled steel price was above $1200 for the first time. This is remarkable and ultimately driving costs to even higher levels for the deliveries of metal in March and April. Coincidently, the LME has risen to levels higher than we saw in the recent runups.

My commentary from my previous email/blog still holds. The recent weather impacting a great portion of the United States from Portland, Texas, Chicago, and mills in the south, with poor transportation and electrical outages, continues to put pressure not only on supply but on prices. We take no pleasure in having price increases, but we are firm in doing the best we can in explaining these increases while advising our customers to share the information with their customer base.

East Lake Metals is more than a supplier of Galvalume and Aluminum PVDF, and MF Galvanized and Galvalume. We provide metal to many markets in addition to roofing and wall systems, including cargo, rain carrying, agricultural, and sign stock. We are a service center. As part of our service comes working with our customers on difficult topics like pricing in these times.

The purpose of this correspondence is for you to be well informed so that you can share the information we share with you. It is advantageous for the end-users to understand the challenges that we are all facing in the metals market. My last email goes into these details and is a worthwhile discussion piece for your customers.

Warmest Regards,

Brian Patrick
President of ELM