Chinese customers have been active in purchases of import billet recently and have bought more than 100,000 mt in less than two weeks. Deals have been done at small discounts this week: however, today, March 19, bids from China have visibly declined, and so market participants are closely watching the situation in the market.
About 30,000-40,000 mt of ex-Russia billet has been sold at $395-400/mt CFR to China, following a sale of about 40,000 mt of billet of the same origin at about $405/mt CFR earlier. Moreover, up to 40,000 mt of billet from India has been traded at about $400/mt CFR China. This is in addition to the ex-Indonesia billet sold last week. As SteelOrbis reported earlier, 20,000 mt of billet from the newcomer Dexin Steel changed hands at $405-410/mt CFR; however, some traders have said that in fact there were three similar cargoes sold, not one, but this information has not been confirmed by the time of publication. As a result, since the beginning of last week, from 130,000 mt to 180,000 mt have been sold to China from different sources.
Nevertheless, bids from China have fallen on Thursday due to the drop in steel futures prices. Rebar futures prices at Shanghai Future Exchange have lost RMB 32/mt ($4.6/mt) or 0.9 percent today from Wednesday. “The futures market has dropped. The RMB has lost much value, two percent this week,” a source stated, explaining the recent decline in bid prices.
China has been the only big market for import billet recently for major exporters. “Overseas markets are in panic. But China is still asking,” a trader said.