During the past week, Turkish producers' hot rolled coil (HRC) offers to their domestic market have increased by $15/mt to $520-530/mt ex-works as global iron ore prices have once again started to move up.
Turkish steel mills' order books are full and they are accepting orders for February output at the earliest, while it is observed that Turkish buyers are unwilling to place orders for February as they consider this delivery time to be too long. As a result, demand for Turkish steel producers' HRC offers for February output has been at low levels over the past week. Meanwhile, buyers, maintaining a cautious stance amid the sharp rise recorded in global HRC quotations, have preferred to purchase import HRC instead of domestically produced products due to shorter delivery times, though they are only buying in line with their needs.
Despite the upward movement of Turkish producers' domestic HRC offers, traders in the local Turkish HRC market have kept their prices stable during the past week. Buyers in the spot market are also very cautious due to the recent sharp depreciation of the Turkish lira against the US dollar and demand in the spot market is currently at low levels.
The domestic sales prices of traders for local and imported hot rolled flat steel products in the Eregli and Gebze regions of Turkey are as follows:
| Product | Price ($/mt) | |
| Eregli | Gebze | |
| 2-12 mm HRC | 510-520 | 510-530 |
| 1.5 mm HRS | 550-560 | 555-575 |
| 2-12 mm HRC (for large tonnages) | 490-500 | |
| 3-12 mm HR P&O | 560-570 | 580-610 |