The London Metal Exchange (LME) announced Thursday that it has received the first delivery of steel billet into New Orleans. The order shipment totaled 3,315 metric tons (mt). With the delivery into New Orleans, total LME steel billet stocks now stand at 10,140 mt in the US and 47,320 mt globally (including cancelled warrants).
Trading in steel billet at the LME has continued to grow rapidly in the first half of 2011 with 123,173 lots traded (8 million mt), up 214 per cent compared with the corresponding period last year (57,648 lots; 3.7 million mt).