Ex-India hot rolled coil (HRC) prices were kept unchanged by large mills, but the market lapsed into complete inactivity on year-end considerations and holidays and uncertainties in the New Year expected to bring much change in the conditions.
Sources said that large mills were heard to have submitted offers in range of $500-535/mt FOB, the same as last week, but without any response from most customers globally.
At the same time, according to market insiders, local sellers have been awaiting some clarity on uncertainties like new tariff quotas for the next quarter in the EU and result of ongoing anti-dumping investigations. They said that unverified information indicated low tariff quotas for ex-India HRC in the coming months. But it was added that lower quota would not make fundamental change as import quotas for October-December were unutilized to extent of 15-25 percent indicating low interest in sourcing from India by Europe based distributors.
“2025 will see lot of aggression on tariff policies across economies. Several governments in US and Europe can be expected to adopt aggressive tariff policies as protection. This will have fundamental changes in global trade and challenges for Indian exports,” a source in Tata Steel Limited told SteelOrbis.
“Prices will remain under pressures on lower trade volumes. Indian mills are expected to take very conservative assessments in deciding export allocations going forward,” another source said.