Turkey’s Kardemir has opened new billet sales in its domestic market, raising its offers as expected. Moreover, buyers have found the offers quite attractive and have booked a large volume of billet overall.
Integrated producer Kardemir has announced billet prices at $490/mt for S2356JR grade and $500/mt for B420, both on ex-works basis. In late January, the supplier’s offers stood at $480/mt and $495/mt ex-works, respectively. By the time of publication, Kardemir has managed to sell over 55,000 mt of billet since domestic customers have revealed decent interest in restocking, and the producer has closed its sales by 3 p.m. “Scrap prices increased over this period of time and the earlier short sea billet deals were at around $440-445/mt CFR and above, so the buyers have an acceptable average,” a Turkish producer said.
In addition, in the Iskenderun region, a producer has sold a total of 7,000 mt of billets to re-rollers at $520/mt ex-works. Earlier in the week, another mill in the region had managed to sell billet at $510-515/mt ex-works.
In the import segment, as SteelOrbis reported earlier, around 75,000-80,000 mt of billet have been recently booked from Malaysia at the average price of $485/mt CFR for end-of-February and March shipments. New offers from Malaysia have been coming at $485-487/mt CFR for April shipments, while China and Indonesia have been offering at $473-475/mt CFR. In addition, Ukraine has been voicing its prices for April production billet at $510/mt CFR, not being under much pressure to sell.
No firm offers from Russia or Donbass have been reported this week in the Turkish market, while some sources assume the indications should be closer to $450/mt CFR at present. Exporters particularly in Russia have been facing some serious issues with the Russian railroads, i.e., higher prices, congestion and transportation delays. In addition, the firmer exchange rate of the rouble has been making exports less attractive recently. The SteelOrbis reference price for ex-Russia Black Sea billet has been at $430/mt FOB today, inching up by $2.5/mt on average from the previous day and up $5/mt over the past week.