After remaining quiet for most of April, the Indian hot rolled coil (HRC) market showed some improvement in activity levels last week, with buyers indicating interest in the lower prices of Russian and Ukrainian HRC offers.
In the meantime, domestic HRC offers of local steel producers last week remained at their previous levels. While Indian mills' HRC offers were at INR 35,000-35,500/mt ($789-801/mt) ex-works, in the spot market HRC was priced at INR 34,000-36,000/mt ($767-812/mt) ex-warehouse.
As regards import offers, ex-Ukraine HRC offers to the Indian market at $705/mt CFR and Russian HRC offers at $720/mt CFR have attracted the interest of Indian buyers. In the meantime, since ex-China boron-added HRC offers at $750/mt CFR have remained above Russian and Ukrainian offers, Indian buyers conlcluded some HRC transactions from the CIS region last week. On the other hand, Russian steel producers have been offering cold rolled coil (CRC) to the Indian market at $815/mt CFR, while Chinese offers for 1 mm hot dip galvanized (HDG) coil have been at $870/mt CFR.
The general market outlook this week suggests that HRC domestic and import prices have reached bottom. While market activity remained sluggish in general in April, last week an improvement was witnessed and some transactions have been concluded. Market players are generally expecting activity to accelerate and prices to switch to a climbing trend again in the coming period.