Indian imported scrap prices remained largely stable in offers and posted some slight increase in rare deals, while trading conditions remained subdued with secondary mills preferring to wait for market conditions to improve, SteelOrbis learned from trade and industry circles on Wednesday, July 28.
Traders and industry players largely attributed low trades to seasonal factors and secondary mills awaiting for the rainy season to abate and construction activities to pick up before committing raw material bookings.
They said that while rebar prices had moved up slightly over the past week, the pace of rise is still slow to support high raw material prices in deals and scrap prices are still too high and buyers expect the global slowdown in scrap market to deepen into a correction.
Sources said that containerized shredded scrap offer prices are largely stable, showing marginal variations and reported in the range of $530-535/mt CFR Nhava Sheva port in the west compared to $530-540/mt CFR reported a week ago.
“The slowdown in trading activity is noticed in most global markets, except for maybe Pakistan. Indian secondary mills are looking at price of around $500/mt CFR and are unlikely to commit bookings above that level during current seasonal sluggishness in construction and demand for long products,” an official from a Gujarat based secondary steel mill cum trader said.
“Indian rebar prices are up but this is largely owing to cost push rather than demand driven. Hence unless margins from sales of long products improve, secondary mills will continue to maintain minimal raw material stocks,” he added.
Sources said that among the stray trades of the week is a booking for ex-US shredded scrap to a secondary steel mill based in Raipur in central India at around $525-530/mt CFR Kandla port in the west. Last week the tradable level was hardly above $510/mt CFR.