Indian mills have kept refraining from giving any export offers during the past week, halting export sales following deepening pessimism in Asia amid discounted ex-China offers, geo-political uncertainties in the Middle East, and the still sluggish demand in Europe.
Specifically, ex-India prices have remained notionally at $590-620/mt FOB, the same as last week. According to sources, several mills have continued to report ongoing talks on long-term export contracts with buyers from Europe on fixed discounts, but no deals have been concluded so far. Notably, in order to progress in long-term export contracts, local mills are completely out of overseas markets, where a lot of discounted material is heard to be flowing in from China and where there is a very bearish mood across Asia and the Middle East.
“Considering robust domestic demand and rapid movement from mill-to-market, there is no economic sense in getting into a price war to sell overseas. October-December export allocations for most mills are negligible anyway,” an official at a private mill told SteelOrbis.
“Europe does not hold much promise either after most of the tariff quotas were exhausted very early in the month. There are too many sellers and too few buyers in most overseas markets. We do not see any viability in getting into the crowd,” he added. The acceptable price for buyers in southern Europe is below €580/mt CFR, which corresponds to around $560/mt FOB. ($1 = €0.95).
