While ex-Russia hot rolled coil producers mainly remain out of the market for September production exports, Ukrainian mills have taken advantage of this situation and closed deals with a significant price increase.
This week, Turkey booked some large volumes from Ukraine’s Metinvest for end-of-September production at as high as $450/mt CFR for small coils. Last week, around 5,000 mt of the same product were sold to Turkey at $435/mt CFR. Turkey’s domestic offers are at $470-475/mt ex-works mainly for October production, which has supported the seller in reaching higher levels in the most recent deals. In addition, Metinvest sold a small volume of HRC to Israel at $485/mt CFR, SteelOrbis has learned. The supplier’s offers to Egypt were reported at $470-475/mt CFR this week.
With regard to Russia, only Severstal is in the market to sell for September production, targeting $440-450/mt FOB Baltic Sea. The company plans to have a limited volume and all of it is to be sold to the EU, also taking into account the favourable euro-dollar exchange rate, SteelOrbis understands. NLMK is going to have a limited volume to sell and is in no rush to negotiate and is expected to offer after the holiday in Turkey at the earliest. MMK, which restarted its modernized mill 2500 around 10 days ago, is currently estimating its possible HRC export availability for September production.