Traders continue limiting GC trade volume

SteelOrbis Shanghai Traders are still continuing to control the trade volume of galvanized coils, which led galvanized coil market prices to keep increasing last week. Meanwhile, the market inventories increased a little, and many steel mills released new ex-factory price this week. 1.0 mm galvanized coil prices increased around RMB 250/mt ($31), 0.5 mm galvanized coils RMB 240/mt ($30), and 0.23 mm galvanized coils imported from Indian BHUSHAN Steels & Strips Ltd by RMB 227/mt ($28) in local markets. After Baosteel, many steel mills have increased their galvanized product ex-factory prices this week. The increases in galvanized coil ex-factory prices this week varied in RMB 100-500/mt ($12-62) range. Because June galvanized coil supplies of steel makers will be short for the domestic market due to their strong exports, traders are expecting further increases in ex-factory prices for local markets. Therefore, they are also hiking their prices one after the other, in order to limit the trading volume and to keep their prices at a high level, which would recover further possible increases in ex-factory prices. Consequently, the trading volume did not enlarge further this week and the market inventories increased a little compared with last week. Chinese galvanized coil export prices are currently in $760-800/mt FOB range. The export prices of galvanized coils increased about $30-40/mt recently. On the other hand, overall galvanized coil import quantity decreased a little, while the imports for the specifications that are not produced in China have increased slightly.