Over the past week, the previous downtrend in local Indian cold rolled coil (CRC) market has been reversed with prices increasing by INR 1,000/mt week on week to INR 47,000/mt ($656/mt) ex-works as domestic steel mills have commenced hiking base prices, but buyers’ resistance has been evident in the sharp fall in trading activity, traders said on Tuesday, February 5.
Market sources said that a few large domestic steel mills have announced base price hikes ranging around INR 1,000/mt with more mills expected to revise prices for current month deliveries over the next few days.
“Not only was the size of the base price hikes much higher than market expectations, coming as it does amid rising inventories across market intermediaries and end-users, there has been significant resistance from buyers, evident from the almost negligible trading activity in the market,” a Mumbai based trader said.
Two other traders said that the local flat steel product market has been showing divergent trends with hot rolled coil (HRC) and CRC prices trending in opposite directions, because resistance to higher HRC prices has gained momentum, while in the case of CRC it is still building up and the market is still to react after reports of base price revisions started coming since late yesterday, February 4.
The traders also pointed out that the price divergence could also be attributed to higher import competition in case of HRC compared to the volume of inward CRC shipments.
$1 = INR 71.63