By the end of the week, some relatively fresh import billet deals have been disclosed in the Turkish market, reflecting a lower workable price levels for the small lots for prompt shipments.
According to sources, two buyers managed to insist on $552-555/mt CFR for a total of around 3,000 mt for ex-Donbas square billet with a short lead time. The offers for limited cargoes from other suppliers have been mainly coming at $555-560/mt CFR depending on the region while earlier, as SteelOrbis reported, around 20,000 mt were sold at $575-577/mt CFR.
Some market sources have been seeing the real market level at $550/mt CFR Turkey by the end of the week, though last week the lowest reference price level was $565/mt CFR.
In the meantime, according to some market sources, around 20,000 mt of billet ex-Russia have been recently traded to the Izmir region at $524/mt CFR by a large mill, while earlier this week Russian producer’s price was at around $540/mt CFR. Many players doubt this level could have been possible, as they do not see there was a “necessity to go $15/mt below the lowest offer level.” So SteelOrbis is not including this level to the reference price.
The SteelOrbis’ reference price for ex-Russia billet has been at $505-515/mt FOB Black Sea on September 16 with the midpoint at $510/mt FOB, the upper end of the range has come down by $5/mt.