Indian local cold rolled coil (CRC) prices remained unchanged during the past week at INR 37,800/mt ($532/mt) ex-works amid virtually no buying interest in reaction to disappointment of lack of demand revival during the festival season and continued negative performance reports from the domestic automobile manufacturing sector, SteelOrbis was informed.
The traders said that the automobile manufacturing sector did not see any demand revival during the festival season with sales of passenger vehicles declining for the eleventh consecutive month during September 2019 and that with more production cuts expected from manufacturers, fresh bookings for local CRC was expected to fall even further in the coming weeks.
Market sources said that most large steel mills were offering across board discounts ranging around INR 500/mt ($7/mt), but sales of finished products were so weak and inventories so high that buyers are not willing to make fresh bookings despite discounts. “Most large domestic steel mills have decided to maintain base CRC price for the current month. But the discounts have been de-linked from volumes and are on offer across the board,” a Mumbai based trader said.
“With Indian CRC exports not finding many takers and domestic demand unlikely to see a revival in the medium term, large steel mills have significantly lost their pricing power and can only be expected to reduce plant capacity utilizations over the coming months to check mounting inventories,” a source said.
$ 1= INR 71.06