The longs market in southern Europe is still struggling. Sluggish demand and stressed prices are already causing some mills to consider production stops.
In the local Italian market, the current tradable price for rebar has been reported at €320-330/mt ex-works base (€585-595/mt ex-works including regular extras), but with some rumors of sales reported at €300/mt ex-works base for larger volumes (€565/mt ex-works including regular extras). The steel mills’ attempts to increase offers to €360/mt ex-works (€625/mt ex-works including regular extras) last week did not work and demand seems to have remained low. “Even in the beams segment, they are now losing more than €10/mt per week,” commented one Italian trader.
The situation in the export market is not improving either. Ex-Greece rebar has been offered at €570/mt FOB and Greek wire rod at €580/mt FOB. Ex-Italy rebar has been offered at around €530-550/mt ex-works (with attempted increases of €10-20/mt compared to last week) for the European markets, but, according to the sources, foreign demand also remains very weak. “Some Italian producers are already considering closures,” an Italian source said. “This means that the situation is definitely negative, if you consider that we only reopened a couple of weeks ago after the summer holidays”.
On the import side, ex-Turkey rebar offers have been reported at $580/mt FOB for September and October shipments (around €570-580/mt CFR southern Europe), while wire rod has been offered at $590/mt FOB (€580-590/mt CFR). From North Africa, ex-Egypt offers have been reported at $570-575/mt FOB for both rebar and wire rod (around €555-565/mt CFR), while ex-Algeria offers have been stated in the range of $540-560/mt FOB for rebar (€525-550/mt CFR) and $545-560/mt FOB for wire rod (€530-550/mt CFR). Asia has been offering wire rod at around $520/mt FOB (around €540-550/mt CFR).