Turkey’s integrated steel producer Kardemir has announced its domestic billet offers today, November 8, with the offered price a little below the earlier voiced general market expectations. As a result, the supplier has closed sales within a rather short period of time, trading a significant volume.
Kardemir has announced billet offers at $525/mt ex-works for S235JR grade and $535/mt ex-works for B420 one, while the expected price was at least $5/mt higher than. The mill closed its sales fairly quickly, selling close to 60,000 mt of billet. “The market said in the morning that most of the tonnage was booked within five minutes and various buyers could not even book,” a trader told SteelOrbis.
In Turkey’s other regions, billet prices have not changed much and the mills are trying to keep them high due to limited domestic allocation and the still strong pricing for scrap. In the Izmir region, offers are standing at $545/mt ex-works, while in the Iskenderun region they are at $545-550/mt ex-works.
The import offer range for billet from Donbass and Russia is now at $500-520/mt CFR, stable from earlier this week. The lower end is mainly for December shipments, while the upper end is for small prompt shipment lots.