With the affect of the strong scrap demand in recent weeks not only from Europe and Turkish but the Far East as well and the possible hitches with winter season, strong scrap prşces have also this week pushed the CIS and Turkish billet prices up.
In this week, Turkish billet producers have turned their attention to the CIS origin billet citing the high cost level of the local billet production due to quite strong scrap prices. With the result of this development, which has pushed the CIS prices up, some of the middle sized CIS billet producers' order books for February have almost fulfilled. However, previously observed tight billet availability in the local Turkish market have diminished thanks to the sales of a Turkish billet producer with great amount of tonnages last week plus the abovementioned recent billet deals from the CIS. Billet sales price levels in the local Turkish market have this week been at $380-400/mt ex-works excluding VAT.
With the strong billet demand from Turkey, billet offers from Ukraine have this week increased to the price level of $400/mt CFR Turkey (approximately $385/mt FOB Ukraine) from the last week's levels of $370-380/mt CFR Turkey. However, no deals at these price levels have been heard yet. Still, it is heard that some rolling mill in Turkey have concluded deals below the price levels of $400/mt CFR. Billet offers from Russia have this week been at $390-410/mt FOB Russia.
As a result, it is observed that the billet price in CIS and Turkey have been at upward trend in the first week of 2009.