Each month ASA asks members of its Industrial Piping Division (those primarily doing business in the industrial/mechanical pipe, valves and fittings segment) for their thoughts on current market conditions and trends, giving the reader boots-on the-ground insights.

“Overall, business conditions have remained softer than planned for as we finish Q1 2025. Main culprits for the slower start include harsher weather conditions than what we encountered in Q1 2024, in turn, delaying the start of construction season as well as the threat of tariffs on goods that could turn into pricing adjustments. Our customers are actively planning up work and while there is optimism with many of them, uncertainty in the economy and the health of the consumer could challenge that sentiment. We are looking forward to starting Q2 and getting into the busy season.”

“Between the tariffs on steel, Comex rising at an alarming rate, and a major pipe wholesaler being sold in our market, the pace of business has been very steady. Tubing pricing has been all over the board based on distributor-owned inventories, but I expect that to level out as existing supply gets gobbled up.”

“This month has been very busy with orders. Many of these orders are being placed in anticipation of price increases because of the tariffs being imposed on steel and aluminum.”

“There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty for the future in the PVF industry. Distributors are concerned that any projects that have not been bought yet will be delayed or sent back out for rebids.”

“As expected, domestic pipe, valves and fittings manufacturers have started to raise prices.”

“Our distributors are selling to end users in refining, power, chemical, LNG, data centers and pharma.”

“We are up 15% in March. Fundamentally outperforming our competition. A2L transition is going well for us. No stock outages. Strategic plan is well crafted.

“We feel that the tariffs are one of the main drivers of uncertainty right now. Any time there is uncertainty we always see a pullback in our markets.”

“We focus mainly on mining, chemical, power, manufacturing, and municipal. All of these markets have been affected with the exception being municipal.”

We are off 7% year over year. However, we had a massive Q1 in 2024. Historically, we are right on pace.

“March has actually been a “bounce back” month for us, after a relatively quiet January and February.”

“Driven by a significant uptick in the power & energy sectors, our sales should eclipse last March by 15-20% and our booked orders have just risen to an ‘all-time’ high”

“We are still trailing last year. However, open orders are starting to grow, which is a good sign for the future.”