According to market sources,
billet prices in the local Taiwanese market are currently at NTD 1,700-11,800/mt ($371-374/mt) ex-works.
In January this year,
Taiwan's
billet imports amounted to 208,924 mt, down nine percent month on month, according to country's import data. In the given month,
Taiwan imported 84,426 mt of
billet from Russia, 103,208 mt of
billet from China (including 56,072 mt of unalloyed and 47,136 mt of alloyed products), 103,208 mt of
billet from Japan (including 7,534 mt of unalloyed and 11,357 mt of alloyed products) and 1,788 mt of
billet from Brazil. Since import
billet purchases in
Taiwan were concluded at the higher price level of $462/mt CFR on average during the November-December 2014 period, the decreases in prices have resulted in significant losses on the buyers' side recently.
$1= NTD 31.53