Import rebar offering prices for the US ascended further this week as Turkish mills' price expectations continue to climb.
Turkish mills started to experience a good amount of orders from their home market and the Middle East, so they have started filling their order books nicely. With Turkey being the only competitive import rebar source for the US at this time, the rise in asking prices from Turkish mills resulted in an overall $1.00 cwt. ($22 /mt or $20 /nt) price increase in the average import rebar price in the US.
Most import rebars now range from $31.00 cwt. to $32.00 cwt. ($683 /mt to $705 /mt or $620 /nt to $640 /nt) FOB loaded truck, in US Gulf ports for February deliveries. With the new increases from Turkey, despite the strength of the euro against the dollar, some northern European mills may show interest in the US market again, as the European market has been going through a soft spot since summer that is expected to last until the end of year.
In the meantime, with inventories on the ground starting to run low, US distributors are finally able to raise their prices for customers to reflect the higher replacement cost for imports. As for new business, traders do not have much interest in the new Turkish offers, however, as they are priced higher than the domestic offers. There are only a few confirmed deals for first quarter arrivals, and import arrivals should continue to be low until February. The pricing trend for imports remains up.
Taiwanese prices remain high for loaded vessels in Taiwan, and if you add the high freight rates, offers come in at a significantly higher amount than the available rebar prices from domestic mills. Japan is showing better FOB numbers, but again, by the time you add the freight rates, business does not make any commercial sense.
On top of the strong local and export prices from foreign mills, due to lack of vessels, many shippers want to ship only to Houston (except for the trickle of Japanese orders arriving on the West Coast), and therefore, imports are not penetrating the East Coast and Midwest regions. For this reason, domestic mills should have no problem in lifting the foreign fighter discounts soon, and in raising their prices come January or February. Scrap prices in the US are also expected to trend slightly up in December, which should give the domestic mills another excuse to raise prices.
For now, domestic rebar prices continue to range from $30.90 cwt. to $31.40 cwt. ($681 /mt to $692 /mt or $618 /nt to $628 /nt) FOB mill.