Ukraine’s Metinvest has finished the week with a $5-10/mt rise in hot rolled coil prices. In particular, Turkey has received offers at $425/mt CFR and $435/mt CFR, for small and big coils respectively. Prior to the increase, some lots of small coils were booked by Turkish buyers at $420-425/mt CFR, SteelOrbis has learned. Similar adjustments were made for other regular destinations. Ukraine’s FOB levels are estimated by market sources as $410/mt and $420-425/mt depending on the coil weight. The supplier is nearly the only one present in the market with offers among the CIS-based producers.
Russian mills have mainly left the market by the end of the week. Baltic region-based Severstal has almost sold out July production with its latest prices for the northern EU set at $410/mt FOB. Most of the deals were closed to Europe earlier at $400-410/mt FOB, again to the north of the EU. In addition, Severstal sold at least 60,000 mt of HRC to Asia in this round of sales within $390-395/mt FOB, as was reported. The total volume of the mill’s exports for July is estimated at around 150,000 mt, versus close to 250,000 mt traded for June.
NLMK is out of the export market, having closed July production sales. According to the market sources, the mill has traded overall not more than 50,000 mt at $410-415/mt FOB, with the majority of the volume sold to Turkey last week at around $430/mt CFR, as SteelOrbis reported.
MMK, the third Russian HRC producer, has decided to pass on exports for July production owing to an active domestic market. The mill has not been giving any price indications over the past two weeks, even though the prices have been rising. Overall, a positive local market where the demand revived once the Covid-19 measures were eased, has become the key reason for the lower export allocation from all of the three mills. This week, domestic HRC prices in Russia were reported at RUB 36,000/mt for July production and RUB 38,000/mt for August, both CPT Moscow and including 20 percent VAT. According to the $1 = RUB 69 rate, the local levels are at $435/mt CPT and $460/mt CPT, respectively. Some sources calculate the corresponding HRC export price with added transportation costs at around $450/mt FOB and above for July.