While Turkish mills have been receiving import offers for steel slabs, they have not been in a rush to make bookings. Although import scrap prices have increased in the latest deal reported from the US, the trend is still shaky and more cargoes have to be booked for January shipment. At the same time, Turkish hot rolled coil (HRC) pricing has been quite weak lately, particularly for exports, causing Turkish producers to hesitate to book import slab, especially origins which are not duty free.
Currently, import slab offers from Indonesia are available at $490-495/mt CFR, down slightly from $497/mt CFR seen last week. Malaysia, which is a duty-free origin in Turkey, is offering at $500-505/mt CFR. Both are available for end-of-January and February shipments, which is considered to be a rather long lead time.
No firm import slab offers have been reported from Russia as some Russian suppliers have been focused on selling HRC instead of semis. However, the estimated prices for sanctioned slab from Russia is at $440-450/mt CFR as a workable price level. As for the non-sanctioned material, buyers estimate the realistic price idea at $465-470/mt CFR although they admit that the initial offers may be $10-15/mt higher due to the lead time advantage.
“Turkey’s captive slab production cost is around $160-170/mt from scrap on average, which means for import slab they will be pushing at least $15-20/mt below $490-500/mt CFR,” a source told SteelOrbis. “In addition, Asian slab is for March delivery and needs to be booked in 50,000 mt lots or maybe slightly lower volumes. With such conditions only Malaysia can be booked, but again at a discount,” the source added.