Brazilian distributors are still fighting to sell wide flange beam profiles in the domestic market, as inventories have reached low levels in June, sources told SteelOrbis.
According to a Sao Paulo-based distributor, WFB revenues declined by half in the past twelve months, as distributors are not seeing much demand for the product.
"We're not selling much WFB in Brazil," a source said. "We expect prices to remain stable in the coming months." According to the source, WFB from Usiminas is currently selling at BRL 2,077/mt ($674/mt) FOB.
As demand continues minimal, several distributors are keeping inventories low in order to reduce costs. "We're keeping our WFB inventories low. We used to have about 20 employees in a distributor center we have in Sao Paulo, but we needed to fire several workers as we haven't seem much WFB orders in the past few months," a distributor said, adding it will shut down the unit.
According to this source, it is selling WFB from Gerdau at BRL 2,080/mt ($675/mt) FOB. By the end of April, the same product was being traded at FOB BRL 2,052/mt.
In addition to the low level of inventories, distributors said they're still finding difficulties to sell domestic-made WFB, as the product imported from China is being sold at BRL 2,010/mt (653$/mt) FOB.
"Imported WFB prices have remained stable from the end of April to now," a source said.
1 US$ = BRL 3.08