Over the past week, demand in the local Turkish billet market has remained slack. However, Turkish mills’ billet prices have remained stable week on week at $495-510/mt ex-works, due to the sideways movement of import scrap prices and since Chinese billet offers have moved on a fluctuating trend but without recording any significant declines in the same period.
Meanwhile, ex-CIS billet offers to Turkey have decreased by $5/mt percent on the lower end over the past week to $500-515/mt CFR. However, Turkish buyers, who usually import billet within the scope of Turkey’s inward processing regime (under this scheme mills have to give a commitment to export the finished products they produce from imported billet), have preferred to meet their billet needs from their domestic market instead of importing billet, in the absence of a clear outlook for their export sales in the coming period. Accordingly, demand for ex-CIS billet in Turkey has not recovered.