India’s flat steel exports have showed mixed signals during the past week with large integrated steel mill maintaining offers unchanged and a few stray deals concluded at a slightly lower level. Exporters have been unwilling to conclude large-volume contracts at lower levels as most local steel mills are in the process of revising base prices and aligning export offers accordingly for March-April shipments, SteelOrbis learned on Monday, January 27.
According to the traders, exporting steel mills are expected to increase export offers after they were getting good realizations from local sales after the recent base price hikes and therefore have not been aggressive in concluding higher-volume export contracts at lower levels.
At the same time, buyers in key markets like Southeast Asia and the EU are having doubts whether the fundamentals of demand will sustain exporting mills attempt to steadily push up prices, and hence they are holding back large bookings.
Indian steel mills have maintained hot rolled coil (HRC) offers in the range of $495-505/mt FOB, but most contracts reported in the market have been in the lower end of the range or below it as buyers have been cautious.
An eastern India-based steel mill has concluded a contract for 10,000 mt for end-of-March delivery with buyers in Vietnam at $493/mt FOB (corresponds to $515-518/mt CFR) against an offer submitted at $500/mt FOB. This deal was lower than a contract concluded by the same mill in the previous week at $495/mt FOB. Most other Indian steel mills have not been offering below $500-505/mt FOB to Vietnam, SteelOrbis has learned.
According to the sources, a western India-based steel mill has concluded a contract for 15,000 mt to Italy at $490/mt FOB against an offer submitted at $500/mt FOB. This information was not confirmed by the buyer’s side. However, sources commented that, even taking into account that this price is low for the producer, it has been a tradeable level in Europe and even lower bids have been heard in the market.