As no change in demand level has been observed since last week in the European rebar market, prices have still softened in the market in question. Demand is currently considerably slow in the European market and the buyers in this market have been hesitating from buying material.
Meanwhile, demand is currently at low levels in Italy and Spain domestic rebar markets and these countries' rebar offers to export markets are also in a softening trend. Prices in the local and export markets in Europe have been varying depending on customers, payment terms and tonnages in orders. It is heard that producers are making discounts for orders with certain large tonnages. For this reason, varying price levels in rebar offers from this region can be heard. While some market players think that softening in scrap prices have seen the bottom line and the scrap prices will not likely to go down further, some other market players think that scrap prices will likely to soften furthermore and so the rebar prices will also decline. However, in general, European rebar market players share the idea that there is a cost of collecting and loading the scrap and it is not possible to see the levels below those costs. Otherwise, nobody collects scrap. These market players also say that they do not expect any considerably increase in rebar demand levels in near future so that there will be no big change in the market trend without the demand upward movement in question. It is observed that Turkish, Italian and Spanish producers are in a competition in some markets and the rebar export offers of Italian and Spanish producers are currently at €350-360/mt FOB. Also in the Portuguese domestic market, due to the competition among rebar producers and due to weak demand, rebar prices are softening.
No considerably change has this week been observed in the eastern European rebar market. Due to the exchange rate between eastern European countries' currencies and the US dollar, rebar prices have fluctuated. Weak demand is also being observed in this region. There have been only rebar offers but no deals in this region. It is also expected that the producers' rebar prices will likely to soften in the eastern European rebar market.
In general, the same question is still there in the European rebar markets: When will the buyers will start to buy again?