Italian producers have struggled to raise their domestic rebar prices in the past couple of months due to the lack of apparent consumption, according to local sources. Local producers’ prices have trended sideways in the past two weeks, at €405-415/mt, while they were at €400-405/mt in late August, all ex-works. However, local producers are now targeting €420-425/mt ex-works. "Several producers have been too cautious in implementing price increases in the past few weeks, as they feared that supply may exceed demand. Due to their uncertain stance, local buyers have been limiting their purchases to what they needed strictly," explained one source. At the same time, local scrap prices have increased only slightly in September, and so their support for higher rebar prices has not been so strong.
Meanwhile, Italian export offers' have been at €410/mt FOB for October shipments. One source underlined that one producer is not giving offers at the moment, while another is late in delivering previous orders. In general, Italian producers "sold too much at too-low prices during the summer and now cannot afford to make more mistakes. Consequently, I think that prices will hold up in the coming weeks," said the manager of one Italian long steel producer.
Speaking of exports, the news of the initiation of an antidumping duty investigation in Canada on rebar imports from seven countries including Italy has certainly attracted a lot of attention in the Italian rebar market. "After Algeria, the loss of Canada as an important outlet market could represent another severe blow for Italian rebar producers," one source commented. According to the same source, so far this year at least 150,000 mt of rebar were sold from Italy to Canada.