Negotiations in the US import basic pig iron (BPI) market have continued this week with more rumors about price fall emerging. Buyers and sellers are bargaining who is taking the major part of new tariff costs (10 percent), but as for now with no confirmed new deals for June shipment, prices from Brazil have declined just slightly.
A few sellers from Brazil have said that they are seeing the real tradable price for June shipment BPI with 0.15 percent pf phosphorus content at $460/mt CFR or just a few dollar below, translating to $435/mt South Brazil. This is slightly down from the assessment of $465/mt CFR as the lowest last week. But no new deals for this grade have been reported this week.
At the same time, a rumor about a deal of Brazilian BPI at $420/mt CFR has emerged this week. Most of market sources polled by SteelOrbis agree that this is not a market level, though this has been actively discussed for cargoes that were booked before the announcement of new tariffs in early April. “I know about 2-3 cargoes being renegotiated, so this price not groundless, but definitely not for the current market. Buyers were pushing to this level, saying that in such conditions the seller will take tariff costs on the previous cargoes, and in the next deals the tariff losses may be more on the buyer,” Brazilian source said. “I also heard of the $420/mt CFR deal, supposedly this is P 0.4%, but I have no confirmation. All others are at around $450-460/mt CFR,” a Europe-based trader said. A few market sources said that they do not believe that sellers agreed to take all the losses even for previously signed contracts: “Americans want to share losses half by half, Brazilians insist on everything should be on the buyers' side,” one of the sources said.
In addition, a deal for BPI with low phosphorus content of 0.10 percent has been heard at $475/mt CFR.
The SteelObirs reference price for import BPI in the US has been corrected down by $5/mt over the week to $455-475/mt CFR.
