According to market sources, over the past two weeks prices in the local Italian flat steel market have decreased by €10/mt. As a result, local producers' domestic hot rolled coil (HRC) base prices are now at €530-540/mt ($630-643/mt), while domestic cold rolled coil (CRC) and hot dip galvanized (HDG) coil quotations are respectively at €610-620/mt ($726-738/mt) and €620-630/mt ($738-750/mt), all ex-works.
Market sources have attributed the decrease to negative sentiment among buyers. Transaction volumes are scarce as buyers think that current prices are still too high. However, Italian producers are unwilling to decrease prices further, also since import offers are almost non-existent due to the ongoing safeguard investigation initiated by the European Commission. For this reason, sources believe that prices should trend sideways in the coming period.
€1 = $1.19