Indian hot rolled coil (HRC) exporters have maintained their official price offers and some of them have remained absent from the export markets, while some have still been considering lower prices amid the slowdown in domestic sales and rising inventories, SteelOrbis has learned from trade and industry circles.
Like earlier in the week, mills kept official ex-India offers at $550-570/mt FOB levels, but the tradable level has been corrected to $520-545/mt FOB, with the midpoint at $532.5/mt FOB, against $520-560/mt FOB last week.
Moreover, some traders reported that even level below $520/mt FOB were considered in some cases, down to $500/mt FOB, but this could not be confirmed by the time of publication and was assessed as too low by a number of sources.
According to the sources, the only positive is the expected return of some buying interest in the region following the easing of ex-China offer volumes and Indian mills being aggressive to maintain a presence in the market and not completely exit it even at the cost of lower or negative margins from such overseas sales.
The offer prices to the UAE have been at $580-585/mt CFR and some trades are rumored at the lower end of the range. Though not officially confirmed, this level corresponds to $545-550/mt FOB.
In Turkey, the tradable level for ex-Asia origin HRC is at $560-565/mt CFR at the highest and some Indian mills have been offering at $570/mt CFR.
Demand in Vietnam is close to zero, so suppliers are not expecting demand in this destination to revive soon.
“It is not a revival but buyers, like in the Middle East, are showing some willingness to conclude deals, but only if requests for discounts are met. The improved interest could be attributed to lower ex-China volumes coming to the market,” an official at a private mill said.
“But it continues to be a buyers’ market and sellers have little pricing leverage as the market remains in bearish territory. Local sellers are willing to increase discounting levels more than before because of the significant difficulites in the local market. We can only hope that prices have bottomed out at current levels,” he said.
