The difficult conjuncture continues in Italy as regards stainless steel flat products. The market is suffering due to excess inventory, which doesn’t allow distributors much of a margin on their sales prices.
The product pile-up at traders’ warehouses is due to a number of causes, all of which came together at the same time. First of all, the build up of inventory has been due to a significant upturn in the arrivals of products at competitive quotations from the Far East. In second place, the European steelmakers have delivered huge quantities of stainless steel to Italian customers. Finally, there has been a concurrent slowdown in demand on the part of end-users.
This situation, combined with the imbalance between the European prices and those from the East, has had and is continuing to have repercussions on traders’ sales quotations to end-users, resulting in a significant drop in their profit margins.
From the point of view of supplies, there is an important gap between European and Asian prices, even if the latter are now showing signs of increase. The sustained trend of nickel prices is expected to lead to a hike in ferroalloy extras in the months of April and May.
Turning to the near future, the Italian stainless steel flats market is waiting in anticipation of signals, in particular from the continental European steel producers.