Over the past week, prices in the local Indian cold rolled coil (CRC) prices have remained stable at INR 45,500/mt ($656/mt) ex-works, amid scarce trading with market participants awaiting pricing signals from domestic steel mills, traders said on Tuesday, June 11.
“Most large steel mills are yet to announce base prices for CRC for the current month even though prices have been hiked for other flat products. The stability of CRC prices has been due to expectations that domestic steel mills will maintain base prices unchanged considering that CRC stock movements have been the slowest among all flat products and also given the comparatively high inventories across market segments,” a Mumbai-based trader said.
“My understanding is that, for CRC, local steel mills are not willing to adopt a strategy of increasing base prices and offering discounts as some mills have done for HRC. The latter could work if HRC stock movements were far higher compared to CRC and discounts offered could be compensated for by higher sales, which could not be assured due to steadily falling trading for CRC,” the trader added.
$1 = INR 69.4