No major difficulty is seen on the supply side in the Turkish wire rod market towards the end of August. Meanwhile, Turkish wire rod buyers are seeing quite competitive prices in the local market for large tonnage purchases. Ramadan has certainly influenced the producers that generally do business with the local market and the Middle East and that also produce downstream products (such as wire, nail etc.) using wire rod as raw material. Additionally, it is heard that there has been a slight slowdown in the sales volume to Iraq from Turkey's southern areas due to Ramadan. However, several wire/nail producers (who previously filled their order books before Ramadan and are keeping stocks at high levels in order to be able to meet their orders on time) have been maintaining their wire rod purchases in order to meet any eventual needs.
Although the slackening trend in the local Chinese market has caused a slight downtrend in ex-China wire rod offers (boron-added material), the Chinese offers have not yet reached levels sufficiently low to keep Turkish sales away from the Far East. Also supporting factor the presence of Turkish producers in the Far East is the fact that the Far East markets are maintaining their inquiries though for lower tonnages compared to early August. Also, it is heard that there are some wire rod price inquiries from markets with which the Turkish producers generally do not do business, such as Nigeria.
Taking a closer look at the Turkish producers' position in relation to the export markets, it is observed that several Turkish producers are still targeting the US market for their sales and are insisting on increasing their export offer prices to this market. Several other producers are still shipping export deals which were concluded last month; however, they are also maintaining their production in order to satisfy the needs of their local market.
Meanwhile, it is heard that ex-Turkey export offers for mesh quality wire rod are still at $500-510/mt FOB, indicating no change from last week; at the same time, some producers are still targeting higher levels, with some of them even mentioning export price levels of $530-540/mt for drawing quality wire rods. However, it should be noted that this price range is quite high compared to the levels in the international markets.
Looking at the southern European wire rod markets, it seems that most of the Italian market players have this week started to return to work. On the other hand, it is thought that others will return next week. It is known that producers in Italy are targeting increases for their wire rod prices after the holidays. In addition, Greece - another country whose producers are targeting increased wire rod prices after the holidays - is also one of the countries being observed very closely by Turkish wire rod producers as of this week.