Posted on 12 Oct 2021
Vietnam’s Formosa Ha Tinh has maintained its domestic hot rolled coil prices for new allocations for December shipment, Kallanish notes. The decision signals the company’s view that the Vietnamese strip market has stabilised amid an easing in Covid-19 curbs after major cities in Vietnam were engulfed by Covid-19 lockdowns for months.
The mill announced on 11 October that it is offering non-skin-passed hot rolled SAE 1006 (hot rolled band) at VND 21,010/kg cif Haiphong, a slight fall of VND 20/kg ($0.87/tonne) from last month. “Formosa has kept prices the same as last month, and will not give discounts to any customer,” a trader in Ho Chi Minh City says. “Market sentiment is better now,” he says. The new price in dollar terms, however, reflects an increase because of the strengthening of Vietnamese dong over the past month.
Formosa’s skin passed SAE 1006 HRC for December shipment is pegged at about $929/t cif Ho Chi Minh City. Overseas suppliers of HRC have hiked offers to Vietnam since last week. A leading Indian mill’s offer for SAE 1006 HRC is priced at $920/t cfr Ho Chi Minh City, and Russian SAE 1006 HRC is heard offered at $860-880/t cfr.
The other Vietnamese strip producer, Hoa Phat, is also due to announce its domestic price for new HRC allocations shortly. There is market chatter that the mill has sold out its December allocations and will only release offers for January shipments. A Vietnamese trader believes that this is untrue. “They sold only a part of it [December cargoes]. I heard that they will lower prices slightly,” he adds. Hoa Phat’s prices for hot rolled SAE 1006 bands for November shipments were $900/t cif Haiphong.
Hoa Phat recently announced that it will hike the domestic price of its galvanized, aluminium-zinc coated and prepainted metallic coated steel products by VND 300/kg effective 15 October. The mill’s domestic supply is “very limited” because of its high volume of export sales, the first trader says.
Source:Kallanish
