Ex-India billet prices have been kept largely stable by local mills but export trade has remained silent as expected improvements have proved elusive with the bid-offer gap widening and sellers unwilling to adjust offers in the wake of the strong rebound in local sales, SteelOrbis learned from trade and industry circles on Wednesday, January 29.
Private local mills have maintained offers in the range of $480-490/mt FOB, with the lowest possible heard at $460/mt FOB, but no deals have been done with bids received at $440-450/mt FOB at the highest, lower than the $440-460/mt FOB range heard a week ago.
According to sources, some deals as low as $420-430/mt FOB [from Asian sellers] were heard in key Asian regions before the holiday, but Indian sellers buoyed by the strong revival seen in the domestic market have been in no mood to aggressively adjust offers to push sales overseas.
The reference price for ex-India billet stands at $440-460/mt FOB, down by $10/mt on average over the past week.
“Government mills have remained out of exports for the past several months. Not many private mills are submitting offers as expected improvements in deal prices failed to materialize. Sellers are preferring to wait for a new price trend to emerge after the holidays in China. They are not in a rush to export as the domestic long product market is looking good and secondary mills are increasing semis purchases,” a source from Jindal Steel and Power Limited said.
“Prices in Southeast Asia and the Middle East have bottomed out. But there is no positive driver to enable them to move up. Some attempts at hiking prices in Asia failed as there is too much supply-side pressure,” the source said.
Meanwhile, a revival in the long products market has triggered higher procurement of semis by secondary mills. In reaction, billet trade prices have gained INR 700/mt ($8/mt) to INR 42,200/mt ($488/mt) ex-Mumbai and are up INR 900/mt($10/mt) to INR 39,500/mt ($457/mt) ex-Raipur in the central regional market.
$1 = INR 86.50