Local Indian cold rolled coil (CRC) prices remained stable from lack of activity owing to festival holidays, but negative outlook persisted on continued discounted sales strategy of re-rolling mills, SteelOrbis learned from trade and industry circles on Monday, August 22.
Indian benchmark 0.9mm CRC trade price remained stable at INR 66,500/mt ($832/mt) ex-Mumbai and also the same in southern regional market of Chennai.
However, at least two traders said that there have been reports of one western India based large re-rolling mills confirming bookings at discounts of INR 4,000/mt ($50/mt), deeper than average discounts of INR 3,000/mt ($38/mt) heard in the market a week ago.
“Some price distortions have surfaced in the local CRC trade. Re-rolling mills have stocked up considerable volumes of cheap ex-Russia hot rolled coil (HRC) enabling them to aggressively push CRC sales at discounts. In contrast, integrated mills are facing challenge of selling output from their cold rolling mills based on captive conversion of own HRC priced at higher levels,” a steel sector analyst with a Mumbai financial advisory firm said.
“Our assessment is that that CRC trade price will see some further declines as the expected uptick in demand from automobile manufacturers is being reversed. Festive sales growth of passenger car in September-November period will be tepid, impacted by rising inflationary pressure and increase in financing costs of consumers,” he said.
A section of trade said that market expected an average INR 1,000/mt ($13/mt) reduction in base price by mills in September.
$1=INR 79.90
