Posted on 12 Aug 2022
Chinese prices of nickel pig iron (NPI) kept stable this week, with the price of 8-10% grade NPI in East China's Jiangsu province under Mysteel's assessment staying at Yuan 1,280/mtu ($190/mtu) including delivery and the 13% VAT as of August 10, the same level from one week before.
This week, the domestic NPI smelters were unwilling to cut their NPI offering prices further as their production costs are still staying firm, survey respondents said. Instead, many preferred to lower their output of this ferroalloy to stabilize the prices.
Besides, "some stainless producers recently began returning to the market for procurement, giving NPI smelters some confidence to defend their offering prices to monitor market changes," a market source in Shanghai said.
Although total crude stainless output for August may decrease further, production of 300-series stainless among China's 33 domestic stainless makers under Mysteel's tracking is expected to increase by 3.1% on month to 1.31 million tonnes, which means that their demand for NPI may increase somewhat this month.
However, domestic NPI prices still face great pressure as stainless demand from end-users has not seen any significant recovery of late, and stainless prices have been weakening continuously - a factor that may pressure the stainless mills to cut their buying prices of the ferroalloy to reduce their losses, Mysteel Global learned.
Despite the decrease in ocean freight rates and depressed demand from NPI smelters, Chinese nickel concentrate prices also remained stable this week as overseas miners refused to lower their offering prices, given their mining costs.
As of August 10, the price of Philippines-origin 1.3% Ni content concentrates under Mysteel's assessment was at $46/t CIF Lianyungang port in Jiangsu, unchanged since July 27.
Inventories of nickel concs at China's 14 major ports came in at 7.88 million tonnes as of August 5, up another 18,100 tonnes on week, according to Mysteel's latest weekly survey. Within the total, the volume from the Philippines had climbed for the eighth week to 7.63 million tonnes, higher by another 2.5% from the prior week.
Source:Mysteel Global
