Though the general mood in the Black Sea billet market has remained weak, after a long pause negotiations have become more active this week. Prices have posted a slight increase, but this happened not due to fundamental factors, but as buyers failed to achieve the lower prices targeted in past weeks, and, given the lack of cheap options in the market, some of them have agreed to minimally higher levels.
A few deals for billet from Donbass, the Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia, are heard to have been done to Turkey at $515-518/mt CFR. Though this information has remained unconfirmed by the time of publication, a few importing sources said that this level is reasonable in the current conditions. “We received offers at $520/mt CIF from different channels… but got the best counteroffer at $517/mt CIF,” a Turkey-based source said. Also, at least one source said that for small cargoes of around 3,000 mt for end of June-July shipments bids could be found at $520/mt CFR in the middle of this week, which translates to around $500/mt FOB. Over the past week, Turkish customers were asking for $510-515/mt CFR, seeing a weak scrap market, but suppliers were resisting such low levels and so the market this week has settled somewhere in between. Seeing some improvement in demand, a few traders have increased offers for Russian billet to $525/mt CFR. There have been no confirmed deals for prompt shipment Russian billet so far after sales at $525-529/mt CFR.
In North Africa, demand has remained slow, but cheap options have also been fading away. Fresh offers for Asian billets for July shipment are not below $550-555/mt CFR Egypt, while the previous tradable level for the same origin was at $545/mt CFR at best. Ex-Russia billet would be available at around $540-545/mt CFR now.
The SteelOrbis reference price for ex-Russia billet has settled at $495-500/mt FOB Black Sea, up by $5/mt from yesterday and $2.5/mt higher compared to late last week.
In the Turkish domestic billet market, availability has also been scarce, and the price level has been at $550-570/mt ex-works/CPT. The higher end of the range has increased by $10/mt over the past week due to small volumes sold at $568-569/mt ex-works in the Iskenderun region.