Due to fears of tougher lockdown measures in the country and around Europe, purchasing activities have slowed down in the Italian rebar market in the past few days. As reported late last week, local rebar prices had finally started to weaken after four months and a half due to worsening sentiment. They have decreased further by €10/mt this week to €390-400/mt ex-works depending on customers and volumes. Meanwhile, domestic mills have been pushing for a slight reduction in their scrap purchase prices, which is also having an impact on the local rebar market, according to sources. “Lockdown measures are a source of high uncertainty. Even in a normal situation it is hard to make predictions, but now it is even harder,” the manager of a long steel producer told SteelOrbis, adding he could not exclude further price decreases for both scrap and rebar prices in the coming period.
In this context, export activities have remained subdued, even though Italian rebar producers claim to have sold good volumes for November and December shipments by ship, despite the lack of sales to Canada due to the ongoing antidumping investigation. Italian producers' offers remain in the range of €405-415/mt FOB, according to sources.