Last week some of Europe's merchant bar markets returned to work, while it was the last week of the holidays for other markets in Europe. European merchant bar mills, who will actively return to the markets as of this week, will determine their prices after considering the developments which took place when they were on their holidays. With regard to Turkey, signals of a recovery were seen last week. Decreasing levels of scrap supplies and, accordingly, increasing scrap purchases in recent days have led scrap and billet prices to move up. Moreover, it is expected that finished steel products will reflect these increases in the coming days. Another factor were the billet purchases seen in the market on the back of the rising billet prices. At the current juncture, the important question is whether the bullish price tendency seen in prices is temporary or whether it may be more permanent.
Last week, some slight increases were seen in merchant bar prices in the Turkish domestic market through the end of the week. Prices, which were hovering in the range of TRY 740-800/mt ($471-496/mt) at the beginning of the week, showed increases of TRY 10-20/mt ($6-13/mt) and had reached the level of TRY 750-810/mt ($476-515/mt) by the end of the week. These price increases provide indications that prices may further rebound in the coming days. The continuing upswing in scrap prices as well as in domestic and import billet prices has started to push up merchant bar price levels, which had shown no reaction to the price increases for weeks. Despite this activity seen in prices, for the time being no recovery has been observed in demand.
On the export side, an increase of $10/mt has been observed in offer levels of Turkish mills. Meanwhile, it is heard that some mills have concluded sales at the level of $540/mt FOB. It is foreseen that this slow rising trend in export offers will continue in the coming days. North Africa has continued to be the most important market as regards exports, which are nowadays are performing better than the domestic market. Also, Turkish mills have continued to give export offers to Portugal. Following the price increases seen in Spain, offers to Portugal have attracted more attention. Meanwhile, Turkish mills' export offers have shown some variation depending on the region. Accordingly, last week, offers given by Turkish mills for angles, square bars, flat bars and UPN-IPN were at $520-540/mt FOB, whereas their offers for IPE product groups were standing in the range of $550-580/mt FOB.
As for the southern European market, mills have been returning from their holidays gradually. In Spain and Portugal there have been attempts to apply the price increases that were announced before the holidays. Meanwhile, no activity has yet been observed in Italy. It seems that the merchant bar producers will try to maintain their price increases, considering the rising costs of scrap and of semi-finished products. However, it is still not clear how demand will react to such increases.