Posted on 20 Jul 2022
China Steel Corp (CSC), Taiwan's largest steel mill headquartered in Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan, has decided to trim its list prices of major steel products by another TWD 1,500-2,000/tonne ($50-67/t) for August sales given the impact of lower prices and thin demand in the global market, according to a new company release.
"The decision was made to offset some impact of low-priced steel products imported from other countries and regions and to help downstream customers reduce their purchasing costs and improve their competitiveness in the global market," CSC explained in the release.
The International Monetary Fund warned that global economy may face a risk of recession with the continuous global inflation, the persistent impact of geopolitical issues and COVID-19 resurgence, according to the release.
Global steel prices have been moving down as demand has lost the impetus to grow. Both upstream and downstream industries faced great pressure of weak demand and high stocks as the U.S. Federal Reserve continued to tighten its monetary policy, leading to a decrease in consumption of end-users and resulted in the depression in manufacturing industries, CSC pointed out.
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has persuaded some end-users to build up their stocks in advance, which is another factor for poor steel demand at the moment, the company mentioned.
Besides, prices of major steelmaking raw materials such as iron ore and coking coal have also been falling, which couldn't lend too much support to steel prices, CSC noted.
The weakness persuaded major steel producers in the world to trim their list prices accordingly. For example, Baoshan Iron & Steel, the listed arm of the world's largest steelmaker China Baowu Steel Group, has decided to lower its list prices for carbon steel hot-rolled coil (HRC) by Yuan 200/tonne ($29.7/t) for August domestic sales, as reported.
Considering the pent-up demand and the pressure of destocking, steel mills in many countries and regions have decided to conduct maintenance on their steelmaking facilities or to halt operations to alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand, Mysteel Global learned from the release.
CSC predicted that global steel market may bottom out and recover gradually with the improvement in supply and demand, together with effective financial and infrastructure construction policies in many countries, the release showed.
Source:Mysteel Global
