This week has started with another price increase for hot rolled coil (HRC) in Turkey. The bullish mood is still related to the high import scrap price levels, but also to the absence of aggressive import HRC offers, following the large-scale bookings from China reported on in the past week. Another reason is the HRC price increase in the EU, which gives hope to the Turkish mills to sell to this market. For the time being, the export license situation remains an issue and livelier exports would support Turkish mills a lot. Turkish re-rollers have also been facing the same troubles, which pushed them to book ex-Egypt material, which is not subject to the inward processing regime.
According to sources, an Egyptian mill traded two to three HRC cargoes to Turkey at around $680-690/mt CFR for February-March shipments. Some sources reported the total tonnage as being 40,000-50,000 mt and that most of the volume was sold at the lower end of the range. “The price is high but it will not create any issues in terms of export licenses for the buyers, the same as Euro1 material would not,” a source told SteelOrbis.
Chinese HRC offers are back to $650/mt CFR, following the strong sales of last week, closed mainly at $635-645/mt CFR, according to sources. Moreover, buyers expect a further strengthening of Chinese prices.
Currently, domestic HRC prices in Turkey are at $720-740/mt ex-works, up $10-20/mt up over the past week. Minor discounts are said to be possible, but generally mills are aiming to maintain high price levels, being more or less sold out for February. “They [mills] did sell but the question is what their utilization rate will be for February. And it was mainly local market sales because exports have been dead silent lately,” a trader told SteelOrbis. Turkey’s export offers are at $700-730/mt FOB, which is still not workable for the EU, taking into account the antidumping duty.
