Stocks of the five major finished steel products held by the 184 Chinese steel mills under Mysteel’s regular survey reversed down sharply over May 6-12 to a four-month low of 5.7 million tonnes, as domestic steel market had resumed the business activities and buyers were busy stocking up some volumes on rising prices after the Labour Day holiday over May 1-5.
Mysteel’s latest weekly survey showed that total inventories of these five items comprising rebar, wire rod, hot-rolled coil, cold-rolled coil and medium plate at the surveyed mills’ yards fell 11.5% on week against a 0.7% on-week gain in the prior survey period.
Among the total, rebar stocks fell the most in absolute number during the survey period, slumping by 14.5% or 493,300 tonnes on week to 2.9 million tonnes by May 12, or having been below the 3 million tonnes the first time since late January, and wire rod posted the steepest decrease in percent, down 15.1% on week to 739,500 tonnes as of Wednesday, the survey showed.
“Many end-users returned to the market for replenishment after the holiday to fulfil their needs, at the same time, the dramatic rise in finished steel prices also spurred some speculative demand,” a market source in Shanghai said.
Daily trading volume of construction steel comprising rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 Chinese traders under Mysteel’s other survey did gain substantially over May 6-12, up 29,973 tonnes/day or 12.2% from the last week before the Labour Day break, averaging 274,868 t/d in total.
As of May 12, the national price of HRB 400 20mm dia rebar strengthened for the eighth assessment day to Yuan 6,348/tonne ($984/t) including the 13% VAT, or jumping Yuan 859/t from May 6 and being a record high since Mysteel started the survey on March 3 2011.
The firmness in demand, domestic steel prices and high profits as a result, had led to persistently high output among the 184 mills under Mysteel’s survey over May 6-12, with the total output of these five major steel items approximating 11 million tonnes, or up for the fourth consecutive week by another 0.5% on week.
Stocks of the five finished steel products at the commercial warehouses in China’s 132 cities under Mysteel’s tracking retreated over May 7-13 too after a short-lived accumulation over the holiday, down 5.2% on week to 23.3 million tonnes, the latest data showed.
Written by Nancy Zheng, zhengmm@mysteel.com
Table 1 Five major steel products inventories at mills (May 6-12)
| Product | Volume (‘000 t) | WoW (%) | MoM (%) | YoY (%) |
| Rebar | 2,914.9 | -14.5% | -27.1% | -12.0% |
| Wire rod | 739.5 | -15.1% | -29.2% | -8.8% |
| HR sheet | 981.2 | -6.6% | 6.1% | -16.0% |
| CR sheet | 327.2 | -2.7% | 0.1% | -21.5% |
| Medium plate | 778.4 | -5.1% | -3.4% | -14.3% |
| Total | 5,741.2 | -11.5% | -19.1% | -13.2% |
Table 2 Five major steel products inventories at traders (May 7-13)
| Volume (million t) | WoW (%) | MoM (%) | YoY (%) | |
| Rebar | 11.96 | -5.5% | -17.7% | -8.6% |
| Wire rod | 3.78 | -8.8% | -22.5% | -22.8% |
| HR sheet | 3.57 | -3.2% | -0.1% | -15.5% |
| CR sheet | 1.86 | 1.0% | 6.1% | -8.1% |
| Medium plate | 2.11 | -5.0% | -4.0% | 19.7% |
| Total | 23.28 | -5.2% | -13.6% | -10.4% |
Note: Mysteel has started publishing the new set of data regarding traders’ steel inventories since March 19 2020 to better represent the market with bigger sample sizes.
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.
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