During the past week, ex-CIS billet prices have fallen by $10/mt on the upper end to $500-510/mt FOB. Buyers in CIS-based billet exporters’ target markets have been monitoring the market for a while now, postponing their purchases. But since buyers’ billet inventories have declined significantly, they have accelerated their price inquiries for ex-CIS billet over the past week. As a result of the support provided by this acceleration, CIS-based billet exporters are unwilling to reduce their offers further despite the declines seen in global scrap quotations.
In the current week, billet offers from the CIS region to main export markets Turkey and Egypt have been at $520-530/mt CFR and $520-535/mt CFR, respectively.