Another price decrease has been seen in the Turkish flat steel spot market over the past week due to slow demand, decreasing prices in the hot rolled coil (HRC) segment, and negative sentiment in the scrap sector. Market players expect a gloomy outlook for the coming weeks, given the Ramadan period and the upcoming elections. Retail prices are foreseen to soften gradually in the near future.
“HRC producers reduced their prices, so we [traders] naturally saw a drop in our pricing as well. Besides, demand has been very low for a couple of weeks now, but this week’s business activity has been more or less nonexistent,” a trader told SteelOrbis.
Over the past week, domestic hot rolled sheet prices have decreased by $10-30/mt to $850-890/mt ex-warehouse. However, some larger traders are targeting unworkable levels of $900-920/mt ex-warehouse, while the smaller traders provide extra reductions and are selling at around $850-860/mt ex-warehouse.
Likewise, cold rolled sheet pricing has continued to fall this week, with most traders quoting prices at around $940-990/mt ex-warehouse, down $10/mt over the past week. In contrast, some traders are selling at rather aggressive levels of $915-945/mt ex-warehouse.
