Indian exporters of hot dip galvanized (HDG) coils have lowered their offers for the second consecutive week by $10/mt to $700/mt FOB, responding to Chinese competition and to drive volumes, but US buyers have continued to stay away from concluding new transactions, traders said on Thursday, November 2.
“With ex-China HDG offers softening, Indian exporters have had little option but to respond to maintain their market presence despite falling shipment volumes,” a Mumbai-based trader said.
“But efforts to drive volumes have not yielded significant results. US buyers reported that, even at current offer levels, imports are not competitive vis-à-vis US domestic prices,” the trader said.
At least two other traders said that large Indian HDG exporting steel mills are not aggressively pushing volumes overseas and prefer to push domestic sales as the gap between earnings from exports and domestic sales has narrowed.
With the lowering of export offers was matched by the Indian rupee appreciating to 64.60 to the US dollar, the incentive to push export volumes is lower and so large mills are focusing on domestic sales instead, the traders added.
Market sources said that demand in the Gulf Co-operation Council region has also remained low and no significant transactions have been reported during the past week. The sources said that Indian exporters have not been able to match ex-China HDG offers of around $710/mt CFR Gulf.