SteelOrbis has been informed that buyers in the European Union (EU) countries have started to convert their postponed wire rod demand into actual sales, accelerating their purchases from Turkey, following the European Commission’s announcement of provisional safeguard measures on 23 steel product categories in the middle of last week in the form of a 25 percent out-of-quota tariff. The provisional measures will be applied for 200 calendar days beginning on July 19. The EU’s import quotas total 1,058,110 metric tons for wire rod. As a result, buyers in the EU region have accelerated their wire rod purchases to avoid the 25 percent import duty in case the quota in question is exceeded earlier than the end of the 200 days, and are focusing on purchases from their main supplier, Turkey.
Meanwhile, despite the fall in import scrap and billet prices in Turkey, Turkey’s wire rod export prices have remained stable during the past week supported by the demand received from the EU, and are still standing at $580-590/mt FOB. Additionally, market sources report that Turkish wire rod producers’ offers to the export markets are mostly on the upper end of this price range.