Posted on 09 Nov 2021
The Turkish hot rolled coil market dynamic continued to soften in the past week amid fresh lower-priced import offers in the wake of sizeable restocking in late October.
Chinese HRC offer volumes have increased and prices have decreased in the past week, but confirmation of talked about sales could not be obtained by Kallanish at press time.
In particular, talk of a large – around 30,000 tonne lot – sale of Chinese HRC with a May arrival tag was discussed in the market, booked at the alleged $860/tonne cfr Turkey by two re-rollers. With Ukrainian small coils indicated at $870/t cfr last week for February arrival, market sources doubted the logic of such a purchase.
European offers remain at $940-950/t cfr for January arrival, while CIS material is in the wide range of around $870-900/t cfr, for January and February arrivals. Offers are however tentative, as CIS mills are understood to be well sold out of January-loading volumes by now, and January-arrival offers are higher-priced and low in volume, sources note.
Turkish mills kept domestic offers largely unchanged at $920-940/t ex-works for January- and February-production material amid pressure to reduce offers to gain sales. But long lead times and high scrap and semis prices have kept offers flat for now. Turkish HRC export quotes were at $910-930/t fob Turkey, depending on region, but sales were slow as competition has picked up since China re-entered the global HRC market with low offers two weeks ago.
The US and Canada remain unaffected, but elsewhere there are some murmurs of discontent and concern, and the subsequent wait-and-see attitude of buyers is spreading, traders note. There are no expectations of lowering prices by Turkish producers this week due to long lead times, but the balance of influence appears to have shifted again to buyers, exerting pressure, and pointing to a possible descending curve forming for the remainder of the year, some traders say.
Source:Kallanish
