Interest in buying imported billet in China has increased again, following the rise in futures prices from Thursday last week. Buyers have been focused on purchases of billet from Southeast Asia, which has no import duties.
Two deals for 60,000 mt in total are heard to have been concluded by the main Vietnamese mill to China at $395/mt FOB or $402/mt CFR late last week, a number of sources confirmed to SteelOrbis. However, market participants have different information about the total tonnage - some said it reached 70,000 mt, some said that only one deal for a smaller volume was concluded.
In the middle of May, SteelOrbis was informed about a billet sale of 120,000 mt by Vietnamese mill Hoa Phat to China. The price has been reported at $385/mt FOB. The buyer was Chinese trader Hangzhou CIEC Group. In the January-April period, Hoa Phat exported nearly 500,000 mt of billet to China and ASEAN countries.
Apart from Vietnamese billet, material from an Indonesian integrated mill was sold at $405/mt CFR China last week. The price is in line with the previous booking from the same origin in mid-May.
A contract for ex-Russia billet was heard at around $390/mt CFR China last week, but with no details by the time of publication. The import duty on non-Southeast Asian billet is two percent. After the recent futures increase and the hike in local billet and rebar prices in China, bids for imported billet will also go up and the new deals for non-Southeast Asian billet should be at $395/mt CFR or above, sources have said.
