Some buyers have accepted higher prices for steel billet from Russia and the Donbass region, thus allowing suppliers achieve their targets of last week. However, some of these tonnages have been taken as position cargoes in the hope of higher workable prices specifically in the Turkish market in the future. Currently, it is mostly believed that further price rises in the billet segment may be restricted, mainly taking into account the shaky trend in the import scrap market in Turkey.
Currently, the number of billet offers in the import market in Turkey is not so high and a few sellers are targeting levels of $500/mt CFR and above, while the latest deal for a decent volume was closed at $485/mt CFR. “There is not much billet in the market and some small buyers may accept higher CFR levels, but, if import scrap prices do not increase much, the billet uptrend will also be restricted,” a buyer in Turkey said.
According to sources, one trader has recently booked 20,000 mt as a position cargo from the Donbass region at around $470/mt FOB, which will most probably be offered at over $500/mt CFR shipped from Novorossiysk port.
In addition, a 10,000 mt ex-Russia cargo was sold at the end of last week to Egypt at $470/mt FOB Novorossiysk, and another 5,000 mt may be traded shortly at a similar price.
As a result, the SteelOrbis reference price for ex-Russia square billet is now set at $470/mt FOB, up from $455-460/mt FOB at the end of last week. “We are not in a rush to offer and are shipping old sales until the end of September. The new sales for us from the billet availability point of view are for the first ten days of October,” a trader told SteelOrbis.