Severstal, one of the key hot rolled coil (HRC) producers and exporters, has recently sold out its base allocation for the foreign destinations, being supported by stronger demand and pricing in Europe.
It took the company only a few days to sell the planned tonnage of around 60,000 mt of HRC since the prices for October production were announced. The deal prices were in the range of $500-515/mt FOB and all of the volume was sold to the European countries. It is worth mentioning, that Severstal might later give some additional limited allocation for exports, but it will depend on the local demand situation and the price balance with the export markets, SteelOrbis understands. For September production Severstal sold to export around 70,000 mt.
The other two ex-Russia HRC exporters have not yet started sales for October production. NLMK is expected to have again only around 30,000 mt to sell, while MMK is still taking its time to estimate the possible allocation. However, it is expected that MMK might compensate for the missing Severstal’s volume in the market.
As SteelOrbis reported earlier, in October Severstal will stop for two weeks its 1700/2800 rolling line for the scheduled modernization. In November the 2000 mill will be stopped for the scheduled maintenance. The facilities are capable of 2 million mt and 6-6.2 million mt of HRC production per year respectively.