Posted on 18 Mar 2022
The stocks of finished steel products among traders' warehouses in the 132 Chinese cities Mysteel canvasses decreased for the second week over March 11-17, falling by another 1.5% on week, Mysteel's latest stocks survey showed.
Total inventories of the five major finished steel products comprising rebar, wire rod, hot-rolled coil, cold-rolled coil (CRC) and medium plate held by the surveyed traders had dwindled by 412,000 tonnes on week to total 26.9 million tonnes as of March 17, according to Mysteel's data.
Within the total, stocks of reinforcing bar still witnessed the sharpest decline, falling by 254,800 tonnes on week to 13.6 million tonnes by March 17, while those of CRC grew for the second week, mounting by 6,000 tonnes during the same period to 2.2 million tonnes.
"The re-emergence of COVID-19 outbreaks has caused disruptions to spot steel trading, and there were fewer deliveries from steel mills in our region to the traders' houses due to the impacted logistics," said a South China-based market source.
Another Mysteel survey among the 237 Chinese steel traders it tracks showed that the daily trading volume of construction steel including rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil averaged 176,537 tonnes/day over March 10-16, or higher by 4,750 t/d or 2.8% on week.
However, this volume was still below the threshold of 200,000 t/d – regarded as a normal level in the robust steel consumption season of spring – as demand from building contractors was further dampened by the surge of new COVID-19 cases, sources said.
The inventories of finished steel products in Mysteel's former smaller sample across 35 cities nationwide showed an on-week retreat too, with the total here slipping by 359,700 tonnes or 2% to 17.2 million tonnes as of March 17.
Source:Mysteel Global
