Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel said Wednesday that, effective April 1, 2007, it will institute a raw materials surcharge of $53/st on orders scheduled for April shipment. The surcharge is based on sharply higher prices for steel scrap since late February.

"The continued volatility of steel scrap has made it necessary for Wheeling-Pittsburgh to develop a methodology for administering a scrap surcharge," said Thomas E. Mihelcic, vice president-Commercial. "We believe our calculation provides a fair way for Wheeling-Pittsburgh to capture the growing portion of our production that is influenced by the highly volatile scrap market," he added.

The current scrap content of the West Virginia flat products producer's combined steel production is 70%, but this can change based on operational fluctuations.

The base period for surcharge calculations will be February 20, 2007, for all sheet products, with the surcharge baseline being $295/st.

Wheeling-Pittsburgh has slab production capacity of 2.8 million st and hot-rolling capacity of 3.4 million st. The company recently agreed to merge with service center operator Esmark, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals.