Posted on 19 Jan 2023
Hoa Phat Group will announce the price of its hot rolled coil allocations for March shipment after the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday ends on 26 January, Kallanish understands. Market chatter continues over the restart of the company's idled blast furnaces.
Hoa Phat decided to delay releasing its new prices for “stability” and will peg prices “closest to market prices”, a source close to Hoa Phat says. A Vietnamese trader believes the company expects that prices will be firm after Tet. “They have enough time to offer for March shipment in early February,” he notes. The company’s monthly HRC sales total around 170,000-190,000 tonnes, he adds.
The Vietnamese HRC market escalated last week ahead of a withdrawal of Chinese suppliers in preparation for the holiday. Chinese 3-12mm HRC transacted last week at $620-623/tonne cfr Vietnam, while offers rose to at least $630/t cfr. Chinese 2mm upwards SAE 1006 HRC offers were heard at $655/t cfr Vietnam last week. Chinese quotes are not available this week, Chinese and Vietnamese trading sources said on Wednesday. But one Chinese trader says that he currently has bids for SS400 HRC at $625-630/t cfr Vietnam.
Meanwhile, market chatter continues over the restart of more blast furnaces at Hoa Phat’s steel plants. “It depends on demand, but I can say one [will be restarted] first at Dung Quat and one at Hai Duong,” a Vietnamese trader says. He hears the restart will take place in March. The source close to Hoa Phat guesses “this could be after the first quarter”.
Hoa Phat closed four blast furnaces in November last year, two at each of the two plants. The company had originally indicated it expected a third furnace at Dung Quat will be suspended in early December but this did not materialise. It resumed operation of a blast furnace at Hai Duong in late December.
There are now two blast furnaces operating at Dung Quat and also two at Hai Duong. The Dung Quat steelworks, which has four blast furnaces, has a finished steel capacity of 5.6 million t/year, comprising 3mt of HRC and 2.6mt of construction long products. Hai Duong has three blast furnaces with an installed 2.2m t/y capacity of construction longs.
Source:Kallanish
