Billet and rebar prices in Turkey are currently moving in different directions. While some semis suppliers, Kardemir in particular, have decreased their offers from the end of January in order to spur sales, local rebar mills are attempting to add around $5/mt in order to see the market reaction. “Construction activity is slow and there will be a minor impact from Ramadan, but still. There is little hope that higher prices will be accepted, not until we are closer to March,” a trader told SteelOrbis. In the meantime, scrap prices have remained rather high and so EAF-based mills are not comfortable in terms of costs. On the import side, the availability of billet is quite low since China is on holiday, while some other Asian suppliers are offering for end-of-April and May shipments.
Turkey’s integrated Kardemir has announced a new round of sales in the domestic market, having further dropped its offer price by $5-10/mt to $490/mt ex-works for S235JR and $500/mt ex-works for B420. After the first half of February 17, when Kardemir had already closed its sales, its sales volumes were reported to have totaled 33,000 mt, but later reports indicated that its bookings totaled as much as 70,000 mt. Other local billet sellers, which are mostly EAF-based, are offering at $500-505/mt ex-works depending on the region. According to sources, a medium-sized lot was booked at the end of last week at around $505/mt ex-works Iskenderun region.
Sales of limited volumes of Russian billets to Turkey are disclosed to have been done at $455-460/mt CFR last week, which is lower than the previous transactions made at $465-468/mt CFR. “I think a price below $460/mt CFR is too low, but $460/mt CFR is the fair price for Russia today,” a local trader said. Availability of Russian billet is rather limited as some mills assess the current workable levels in Turkey to be below breakeven, so most offers are still at $465-470/mt CFR or higher for small volumes.
The SteelOrbis reference price for ex-Russia billet has settled at $435-440/mt FOB Black Sea, down by $5-10/mt since last week.
Offers from Asia are temporarily unavailable due to the Chinese Near Year holiday, with offering expected to resume only next week. Market sources believe that China and some other ASEAN mills have to provide offers at $465/mt CFR to attract any interest from Turkish customers in negotiations, while before the holiday Chinese quotations were at $472-474/mt CFR or above. There have been some rumors that before the long holiday more Chinese billet sales were done to Turkey in addition to those disclosed at $470/mt CFR last week. But this information has not been confirmed by the time of publication.