Large Indian integrated steel mills have continued to slash rebar prices in a desperate move to liquidate stocks, having already reduced billet conversion into rebar, while small and medium-scale producers have kept their prices unchanged, having mostly reduced operations over the past fortnight, SteelOrbis has learned on Tuesday, April 7.
Market sources said that large integrated steel mills in India have drastically reduced volumes of billet conversion to long products and slashed prices of rebar inventories by INR 400/mt ($5/mt) to INR 39,000/mt ($515/mt) ex-stockyard. Medium and small-scale producers have maintained their rebar pricing at INR 31,800/mt ($420/mt) ex-stockyard, but sources said that the prices are largely nominal and irrelevant as most of these producers had either stopped production or halted all dispatch to dealers or housing projects across the country.
“Integrated long product manufacturers largely depend on supplies to large infrastructure projects, private and governmental. But even with the possibility of a partial easing of lockdown restrictions next week, large construction companies will face challenges in re-deploying labor, many of them migrants, and resumption of activities at project sites will take at least a quarter and hence re-booking of raw material will remain low,” a manager at Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), a state-run long product producer, said.
“In February, most of the long steel producers recorded a 10 percent increase in rebar production over the corresponding month of the previous year. Much of this production is still lying as inventories, even after production cuts over the past fortnight. This will take care of immediate low demand even if construction activities pick up over the next few weeks. Producers will not need to increase billet conversion immediately,” he added.
$1 = INR 75.80