The trading activity in Turkey’s flats markets has slowed down, following a couple of weeks of a rather intense business, both in the domestic and import markets. One reason is that the re-rollers, pipe-makers and traders have restocked enough and as for coated and cold-rolled steel most of the available allocation for short lead times has already been sold out. In addition, the market players are not in a rush to purchase for May and June deliveries, taking into account the approaching election and related uncertainties. Meanwhile one of the key re-rollers has dropped their prices significantly in order to speed up sales, but whether the others will follow its lead remains questionable for now.
Particularly, one of the Marmara region-based re-rollers, according to Turkish buyers, has dropped its official HDG base price by $50/mt to $1,085/mt ex-works and PPGI offers have decreased by over $100/mt since early March official indications to $1,205/mt ex-works. The other re-rollers in Turkey are in the range of $1,100-1,170/mt ex-works for HDG and $1,300-1,350/mt ex-works for PPGI. “The price gap is huge and I doubt really that the others will follow. Maybe they will wait until the low-priced volumes are sold out and they [the sellers] are back to normal levels. In fact, everyone may have different prices for feedstock, but such decreases are too much to play around,” a source told SteelOrbis.
The similar situation is seen in the CRC market. The mentioned re-roller dropped its domestic 1 mm offer from $990/mt ex-works to $915/mt ex-works, while the other producers are at $990-1,030/mt ex-works currently.
In the HRC market, domestic offers are at $850-870/mt ex-works still, according to market sources, and up to $880/mt ex-works in some cases. Although mills admit their sales have slowed down significantly, they are nowadays in no mood to push buyers since mainly June production is on the table.
