The negative sentiments continue to besiege the Indian GE market with prices falling further by INR 20,000 – 40,000/MT (USD 280 – 560/MT) in past one month.
According to the market sources, current price for 600mm UHP grade electrodes is trending at around INR 280,000/MT (USD 3,900/MT) whereas that of HP grade 450mm is at INR 120,000/MT (USD 1,690/MT).
“The domestic electrodes prices in India have touched a new low as the prices were higher than the current levels before mid 2017 when the market turned around amid supply side structural changes in China. The chances are that prices may fall further amid increased supply from China and piled-up inventories”, quoted a market participant in India.
The free fall in prices is mainly led by high inventories in the system and market share battle between the two key Indian producers in the domestic market. According to the market sources, the utilisation levels of Indian producers have fallen to 50% at present against 85-90% in last financial year 2019-20 amid lack of orders.
Indian GE trade dynamics
India electrode exports have registered a plunge of 27% y-o-y from 81,178 tonnes in 2018 to 58,983 tonnes in 2019. Till 2018, Iran was an important export destination for Indian GE producers with 5-8% of total volumes being exported to the former. However, U.S. sanctions on Iran towards the end of 2018 resulted in Indian producers completely halting their exports to the latter thus resulting in Indian GE exports plunge last year. The key export destinations for India GE were South Korea, Egypt, Turkey and U.S. in 2019.
In terms of imports, India imported about 12,916 tonnes of electrodes with about 8,266 tonnes (64%) coming from China followed by Japan at 1,356 tonnes (11%). In previous year of 2018, the country imported about 7,242 tonnes with 4,019 tonnes coming from China and 2,000 tonnes from Malaysia.
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