Amid a lack of clarity as regards the short-term price trend, scrap suppliers have decreased their offers to Pakistan this week. Pakistani steelmakers, in their turn, have continued to seek support from high input costs and consequently, on June 24 have issued new rebar prices, increasing them by PKR 4,000-5,000/mt compared to the official offers voiced previously.
Specifically, within the past week offers of shredded scrap in containers to Pakistan have fallen by around $10/mt to $525-530/mt CFR Qasim, with most deals signed at the low end of the range. Accordingly, during the current week a Karachi-based rebar mill has purchased approximately 2,000 mt of shredded scrap at $528/mt CFR, for August shipment, while another Pakistan-based steelmaker booked nearly the same volume of shredded scrap in containers (of mixed origin) at $527/mt CFR.
Meanwhile, domestic prices of scrap equivalent to shredded have declined to PKR 95,100/mt ex-warehouse compared to PKR 95,900/mt ex-warehouse last week. Due to the depreciation of the Pakistani rupee against the US dollar, the dollar-based quotations have fallen more noticeably, to $600/mt ex-warehouse, against $610/mt ex-warehouse last week.
Fresh local offers for domestic grade 60 rebar have been announced at PKR 149,000-150,500/mt ($940-950/mt) compared to previous offers voiced at PKR 144,000-146,000/mt ($916-929/mt). All prices are ex-works and effective from June 24. “Actually, prices were depressed before. Purchasing scrap even at $525/mt CFR, we need rebar prices to be at PKR 155,000/mt ex-works. Hence, we expect a further increase shortly,” the representative of a key rebar mill in Pakistan stated.
All prices on Pakistani rupee basis include 17 percent VAT.
$1 = PKR 157.285