The range of hot rolled coil (HRC) prices has widened further in the EU domestic market in the past week, from €920-1,040/mt to €880-1,040/mt, both ex-works. More specifically, achievable spot prices are mostly in the €880-920/mt range in the Italian market and at €960-1,040/mt in northern Europe, all ex-works. Transaction activities have been weak during the past several weeks, while supply has increased in the spot market due to scarce demand from the automotive sector, which has been impacted by the lack of semiconductors globally. "In August and September and for part of October we avoided buying, as we were well stocked and we felt prices were going downwards," an Italian distributor told SteelOrbis. However, he added, "Now, it's time to go back buying. I think prices are about to stabilize." In fact, according to other sources, distributors have recently begun to restock for the first quarter of 2022. This, together with the strong rise of production costs (electricity, coal, freight, road transport, etc.) should help avoid further significant price decreases in the coming period. In the meantime, lead times have normalized somewhat and are not as long as they were in the past year and a half: domestic mills are now offering for January shipments and only a few of them are offering for December deliveries.
As for the import market, offers in general are in the €770-830/mt CFR southern Europe range (duties included). However, according to sources, the number of offers has decreased recently. "Foreign suppliers have taken a step back; for example Nippon Steel and also the South Koreans. The Russians went back and forth as usual. But buying from the import market is a mess. We got burned with the chaos we had at ports in the past quarter and we prefer buying domestically as much as we can," explained one source. Other sources added that imports are not attractive at the moment, also due to long delivery times and the uncertainty about the trend of local prices.