The Turkish steel plate market continues to see moderate business activity with no spikes of demand seen but with the volume of daily sales being satisfactory, mainly for local suppliers. Import allocation has been somewhat limited due to lower supply from Europe.
The availability of European plate has been rather scarce in Turkey. Some suppliers, like Bulgaria’s Stomana, prefer to concentrate on more profitable domestic sales, and so its offer to Turkey is high and stable - at $760/mt CFR for January shipments. Romania’s Liberty Galati remains out of the market due to its continued production outage. Moreover, it seems that the supplier will not resume normal operations for quite a while.
South Korean steel plate offers to Turkey have been reported at $620-625/mt CFR from one seller and at $640-645/mt CFR from another seller. Both offers are for base material and for shipments in the second half of January. Over the past two weeks, South Korean plate prices for Turkey have increased by around $10/mt. Sources report that the lower level of offers is quite workable if slight discounts are applied. Ex-China SS400 steel plate offers are available at $540-550/mt CFR for December shipments, while the basic shipbuilding grades, according to sources, are on offer at $570-580/mt CFR.
Local steel plate prices in Turkey, according to sources, are at $650-660/mt ex-works base, relatively stable over the past couple of weeks, while slightly higher grades are available at $660-680/mt ex-works. Ex-warehouse S235JR plate prices have been reported at $690-720/mt ex-warehouse, while S355JR offers are $20/mt higher, market sources report.
