During last week of August, trade activity in the European HRC market has remained muted since while European mills in the north have started slowly return to work, mills in the south have not started to reopen after the summer holidays so far, expecting to come back next week. As for imports, business has remained slack, with most offers moving mainly sideways or slightly down.
More specifically, workable prices for HRC in Europe are evaluated at €590-600/mt ex-works, both in Italy and northern Europe, mainly the same as last week but compared to €610-620/mt ex-works at the beginning of August. At the same time, despite the decline in tradable prices, the market has continued to discuss that mills aiming to increase their HRC offers in the next round, for October-November deliveries. However, according to most European market players, the price uptrend still hardly visible in September due to extremely slow demand in the region.
At the same time, import HRC trade is still in lull in southern Europe due to a safeguarding review, and an antidumping investigation into HRC from Egypt, India, Japan and Vietnam. Import offers have been voiced at €560-590/mt CFR, down by €10/mt on the higher end of range week on week. Offers for ex-South Korea have been voiced at €585-590/mt CFR, while offers from one of the Indian mills have settled at $630/mt CFR which translates to around €567/mt CFR.
Besides, offers for ex-Turkey HRC have been reported at $630-650/mt CFR, including duty, or around €567-585/mt CFR.
“There were talks about offers from Chinese HRC suppliers at around €540/mt CFR and even lower, but still there is a high duty at 18.10-35.90 percent, depending on supplier, which means the material should be really cheap to be competitive,” a market insider told SteelOrbis.
