Chinese traders have kept buying import billet with more deals disclosed to the market. As a result, there have been deals for about 200,000-250,000 mt of billets from Iran, India, Malaysia and Russia to China after holidays or over the less than two weeks.
About 30,000 mt of Malaysian billet have been sold at $405/mt CFR China recently. Moreover, there has been a rumour that Russian mill has been in negotiations at $395-400/mt CFR for 30,000-50,000 mt, but the information about the deal has not been confirmed by the time of publication. As SteelOrbis reported earlier, ex-India billet (about 60,000-70,000 mt in total) has changed hands at $400/mt CFR after holidays.
Prices for import billet except for ex-Iran have been still much lower than average local billet prices in China. If to include 2.5 percent of import tax and 13 percent VAT, import billet will still be $24-35/mt cheaper than the domestic billet.
Ex-Iran material has been sold at $375/mt CFR last week, about 100,000 mt has been traded, as SteelOrbis reported earlier.
China’s demand for import billet has already positively influenced the price trend in the Southeast Asian market. However, market sources are still not sure if the purchases will continue as the sentiments in the local market worsened.