Demand in the local Turkish billet market has slackened over the past week. After increasing their domestic billet offers last week in parallel with the rises observed in import scrap quotations over the past weeks, most Turkish steel mills have halted their billet sales in the current week.
Although Turkey-based rolling mills expect billet prices to move down in line with the falling trend of rebar quotations, billet supply in Turkey has decreased since most Turkish billet producers have closed their sales. On the other hand, those billet producers whose sales are still open have increased their domestic billet offers by $10/mt week on week to $500/mt ex-works.
In addition to lower domestic billet demand in Turkey, scrap and rebar prices have also moved down. With the lack of any factor providing support for increases in billet prices, and with ex-CIS billet offers declining slightly to $480-485/mt CFR levels, market sources think that domestic billet quotations at $500/mt ex-works are unlikely to gain acceptance from buyers.