In the Black Sea region, according to sources, Ukraine’s Metinvest has traded one-two slab lots to Turkey at $700/mt CFR with the freight estimated at around $30/mt. In the transaction, the producer has met the bids of Turkish customers which have been avoiding deals for quite a while. Offers from Brazil to Turkey have been reported at $730-750/mt CFR, being out of the interest. It is worth mentioning, that Alchevsk SW, according to sources, is planning to be back in the market. Some sources state that the producer has 20,000 mt of slabs to sell with the indicative offer to Turkey at $750/mt CFR.
In the Baltic region, Russia’s Severstal traded 70,000 mt of slabs to the European markets since mid-month at $700/mt FOB and closed the sales for October production. Moreover, the supplier plans to have similar volumes to sell for November, taking into account the scheduled repairs on its hot-rolling lines. The repairs will take around a week in November, but the mill 2000 supplies large parcels for the downstream segment, where Severstal does not plan to decrease production. Therefore the volumes of merchant hot-rolled coils from the mill will be halved for the coming period, sources told SteelOrbis.
In the Far East, the demand has been coming from both Southeast Asia and China. Starting from mid-September, a Russian mill sold a cargo to Indonesia at $755/mt CFR and a lot to China at $760/mt CFR. Moreover, China is still considered to be ready to pay $750-760/mt CFR, while the freight from the Far Eastern ports of Russia is estimated at $30-40/mt. It is also worth mentioning, that there was a deal from Ukraine to Southeast Asia at $750-760/mt CFR closed last week.
