Over the past week a softening trend has been observed in southern European rebar market export offers in particular. Rebar offers given to the export markets from countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece have softened to €340-350/mt ($475-489/mt) FOB. According to market players, scrap buying activity has slowed down since the demand for finished products has been sluggish and scrap prices have registered a downtrend as a result of the weak scrap purchasing activity. This, the market players say, may be considered as the main reason behind the abovementioned price softening. In addition, after the Turkish rebar producers reduced their export offers, the southern Europe rebar producers also reduced their export offers as they are in competition with the Turks in North Africa. Looking at the local markets of the southern European countries, price lists in Spain, Portugal and Greece have remained unchanged, whereas sales may be concluded at lower price levels. In the Italian domestic market, producers' rebar offers to the local market are observed to have decreased. In general, demand for rebar still falls short of the desired levels in southern Europe.
On the Eastern Europe side, we have observed that the producers have tried to increase their price levels in the past week. While the rebar producers' prices have increased in Bulgaria, Romanian mills have not yet managed to achieve their desired increase.
Meanwhile, in the UK, rebar producers have decreased their prices to £320-325/mt ($507-515/mt) ex-works. Demand is also at weak levels in the UK.
In general, price revisions may be seen due to the silence in scrap and billet purchasing activity - a silence which has been triggered by the lack of finished product demand. Currently experiencing trouble in determining finished steel price levels, producers are wondering when and how the price downtrend in finished steel will affect the scrap and billet situation.