The upper and lower houses of the Italian parliament have this week both approved the Italian government's decree 207/2012 which is aimed at ensuring the continuity of production at the Taranto-based Italian steel producer Ilva, the application of Environmental Integrated Authorization (EIA) requirements at Ilva, and the commercialization of Ilva production semi-finished and finished products seized by judges. Accordingly, Ilva will be able to sell around 1.7 million mt of semi-finished and finished steel products on which Taranto magistrates had placed seals.
While waiting for the decree to be passed, the Italian flat steel market has seen a decrease in activities, also because steel mills, service centers and buyers are ready for their Christmas-New Year holidays.
Meanwhile, despite the unblocking of Ilva's materials, some time will be needed for the products to be delivered. The return to normality could take several weeks. Moving beyond such issues and the seasonal slowdown of activity, downstream industry is still experiencing problems, while the economic outlook in the euro zone is still very uncertain.
Meanwhile, Italian flat steel mills are cautious in giving prices and are waiting for Ilva to provide clear guidance. SteelOrbis has learned that coming to the end of the year Italian producers' base prices are at around €490-495/mt ($646-652/mt) for hot rolled coils (HRC), €560-570/mt ($738-751/mt) for cold rolled coils (CRC) and €540-550/mt ($712-725/mt) for hot dip galvanized (HDG) coils, all ex-works.
€1 = $1.318