Ex-India billet offers have been dropped by a few sellers active in the market during the festival holidays in India, but the sellers have still failed to attract any buying in the face of competitive challenges putting domestic mills under pressure in the global market, together with sliding trade prices in local sales, SteelOrbis learned from trade and industry circle on Thursday, October 23.
Sources said stray ex-India billet offers have been reported at $420-430/mt FOB compared to $430-440/mt FOB a week earlier, but no deals have been confirmed in the face of strong competitive challenges in key markets from Russia and China.
The expected rebound in the semis market had been nipped in the bud by a fresh round of weakness in China, and the high levels of inventories across the Asian market have been keeping buyers on the sidelines unless sellers are willing to give deep discounts on current offers.
However, Indian sellers are caught between the twin pressures of the weak global market and sliding local sales prices and are not in a position to enter an increasingly competitive and aggressive export front, the sources added.
“Most export destinations are seeing a deepening of bearish conditions. The current offers being heard at not entirely relevant. Firstly, because these levels are not currently viable for Indian mills and, secondly, there are very few sellers actively pushing sales overseas during the festival holidays,” an Indian source said.
Meanwhile, in the local market, billet trade prices have continued to decline, with very low trade volumes as secondary mills have been sharply reducing off-take amid prolonged depressed long product prices and volumes. Billet trade prices are down INR 300/mt ($3/mt) to INR 37,300/mt ($424/mt) ex-Mumbai and have lost INR 200/mt ($2/mt) to INR 34,700/mt ($395/mt) ex-Raipur in the central region.
$1 = INR 87.94