Although some in the US are concerned that the recent, marked uptick in US domestic hot dipped galvanized (HDG) pricing will lead to a surge in imports, others feel the impact of offshore HDG into the US market will be minimal, at best.
The late-May announcement that the final determinations in the US import HDG trade case had levied hefty dumping and countervailing duty margins against all mills in China and most mills in India, has essentially “slowed the waterfall of imports to a trickle,” one Midwest-based source said.
“So what if Vietnam shipped more than 23,000 metric tons of HDG coil to the US in May. This time last year, China was shipping in 30,000 every few days. The great bulk of the capacity has been taken out of the market so anything that the offshore mills want to ship into the US isn’t really going to make a huge impact in the grand scheme of things,” a trader source noted.
Also of note is the stark falloff in US import HDG coil from Indian steel mills. In May 2015, Indian steelmakers shipped 23,333 mt of HDG coil to the US; in May 2016, that number plunged to 1,907 mt.
In terms of current offer prices, the most recent futures offers from Vietnamese mills for .012 G30 coil have been heard at $775/mt CFR, while offer prices for .019 G90 were approximately $850/mt CFR; a Brazil-based source has indicated that one of the major HDG producers in that country experienced an unforeseen accident, which has halted production at of their blast furnaces, thus leading to decreased availability in futures offers from that country.