Russian mills have been selling their January production hot-rolled coil (HRC) for export during the past couple of weeks and most of them are more or less sold out. However, one of the reasons is the significantly limited allocation from one of the key suppliers. In addition, the domestic flats market in Russia remains rather active in terms of demand, supporting the mills.
In the Baltic region, Severstal has been selling January production HRC at the initially announced prices of $910-950/mt FOB, mainly targeting buyers from the northern part of the EU. The company had planned to trade for export around 70,000-80,000 mt of HRC and, according to sources, the target has almost been achieved. The offers for February production are expected to be announced around next week.
In the Black Sea region, NLMK has traditionally been focusing on the Turkish market, to which the average freight is estimated at $30-35/mt. The producer started selling last week for January to Turkey at $860/mt CFR and additional volumes were sold at $850-855/mt CFR, SteelOrbis has learned. According to sources, the total volume was around 20,000-25,000 mt.
The market position of MMK, the largest HRC exporter from Russia, has been actively discussed in the past couple of weeks, given the supplier has hardly given any allocation for January production in this round of sales. According to the official information, MMK’s total export volume sold for January is only 50,000 mt versus the usual 200,000-250,000 mt. Sources report that the active domestic demand is one of the reasons for the lower export allocation, while the earlier concluded strong sales to Asian markets is another one. “The absence of MMK has played nicely this time as it took pressure off from the import side in Turkey,” a local market player said.
In the domestic market in Russia, mills have announced new offers for hot-rolled sheets this week for January production at $838-872/mt (RUB 74,000-77,000/mt) CPT, down by $18-29/mt (RUB 2,000-3,000/mt) over the past month. Although domestic demand remains decent, the key reason for a decline is that the downturn seen in exports was reflected in the local prices. In the cold-rolled sheet segment, domestic offers have settled at $940-951/mt (RUB 83,000-84,000/mt) CPT, SteelOrbis has learned.
$1 = RUB 73.6.
