Stocks of the five major finished steel products held by the 184 Chinese steelmakers Mysteel monitors continued to move down over July 9-15 to reach 6.3 million tonnes, according to Mysteel’s latest weekly survey. The tonnage dipped at a faster pace of 2.3% on week, against the prior week’s dip of only 0.5%, due to the lower production among mills and increased deliveries to traders and downstream users.
Total output of the five items comprising rebar, wire rod, hot-rolled coil, cold-rolled coil and medium plate slipped further over July 9-15, thinning by another 0.3% on week to 10.8 million tonnes. The decline was 2 percentage points lower from one week earlier, indicating that most steel producers are still preferring to keep their production high after noting the strength of the domestic steel market.
Chinese steel prices hovered at a relatively high level over the past week, propped up by market hopes for an improved second half of this year, Mysteel Global notes. As of July 16, China’s national price of HRB 400 20mm dia rebar, a pointer to the domestic steel market’s health, was assessed at Yuan 3,812/tonne ($545/t) including the 13% VAT, according to Mysteel’s data. This represented a Yuan 6/t rise on week though the level was still well below the Yuan 4,090/t that the rebar commanded one year earlier.
The price pickup occurred despite the fact that steel demand, especially for long steel, turned weak recently with the continuous rainfalls in the Yangtze River basin. The torrential rains have disrupted transport and slowed steel consumption at construction sites, Mysteel Global was told.
Mysteel’s daily survey among the 237 trading houses it charts across China showed that daily trading volume of construction steel including rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil over July 10-16 averaged 203,857 tonnes/day, sliding by 44,065 t/d or 17.8% on week, though still above the psychological threshold of 200,000 t/d.
Over the same survey period, inventories of the five major items at commercial warehouses in the 132 cities monitored by Mysteel increased continuously with the tapering of demand to reach 22.8 million tonnes, marking a larger week-on-week increase of 1.5% against the growth of 1.3% the prior week, the survey revealed.
Table 1 Five major steel products inventories at mills (Jul 9-15)
| Volume (‘000 tonnes) | WoW (%) | MoM (%) |
YoY (%) |
|
| Rebar | 3,306.1 | -3.1% | 10.0% | 39.5% |
| Wire rod | 705.5 | -6.6% | 0.3% | 12.7% |
| HR sheet | 1,077.9 | 4.5% | 7.5% | 10.6% |
| CR sheet | 332.3 | -2% | -4.2% | 12.4% |
| Medium plate | 856 | -3.2% | -0.3% | 17.3% |
| Total | 6,277.8 | -2.3% | 6.1% | 25.6% |
Table 2 Five major steel products inventories at traders (Jul 10-16)
| Product | Volume (million tonnes) | WoW (%) | MoM (%) | YoY (%) |
| Rebar | 12.08 | 2.7% | 9.5% | – |
| Wire rod | 3.65 | -0.3% | 0.6% | – |
| HR sheet | 3.45 | 1.7% | 2.9% | – |
| CR sheet | 1.76 | -1.8% | -4.9% | – |
| Medium plate | 1.88 | 0.7% | 10.4% | – |
| Total | 22.8 | 1.5% | 5.8% | – |
Note: Mysteel has started publishing the new set of data regarding traders’ steel inventories starting March 19 to better reflect the market situation with bigger sample sizes, as explained in the previous data update, and the year-on-year comparisons can only be filled up when such comparisons are available.
Rebar and wire rod: Sample size is increased to 429 warehouses in 132 Chinese cities from the previous 215 warehouses in 35 cities.
Hot-rolled coil (HRC): Sample size is increased to 194 warehouses in 55 cities from the previous 138 warehouses in 33 cities.
Cold-rolled coil (CRC): Sample size is increased to 182 warehouses in 29 cities from the previous 134 warehouses in 26 cities.
Medium plate: Sample size is increased to 217 warehouses in 65 cities from the previous 132 warehouses in 31 cities.
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
Photo Credit – World Steel
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