Iran, one of the largest billet exporters in the world, has remained quiet since the past couple of weeks in the global billet market owing to power outages in the country, impacting production levels of mills.
Owing to the recent Eid holidays and electricity shortage, billets trading on the Iranian Mercantile Exchange (IME) remained limited.
However, production restrictions faced by steel and cement companies on electricity consumption eased last week which resulted in slight improvement in domestic trade. On the IME, around 107,500 tonnes (t) of billets were traded on 3 Aug’21 at an average sales price of 140,237 Iranian Rial, according to data received by SteelMint.
This has been the first active trade in the market post-the electricity outage issues. Prior to this, around 89,600 t were traded at an average price of 1,32,462 Rial two weeks back.
“Majority of key Iranian mills are not offering billets in the export market due to impacted production at mills,” said a billets trading participant from Iran.
KSC floats 40,000 t slab export tender: Khouzestan Steel Company (KSC), Iran’s leading steel exporter, has reportedly floated an export tender for 30,000-40,000 t of steel slabs. The shipment is likely to be scheduled for early-Sept’21. A leading Iranian steel exporter sold 40,000 t of slabs through an export tender at $740/t, FoB Iran towards the beginning of Jul’21 for the Far East.
One of the leading steelmakers from Iran, talking to SteelMint, revealed that, “steel mills are not operating because of electricity outages. Therefore, they have no offers for exports as of now.”
Global billet sentiments have again turned dull after a sharp decline in steel futures. Chinese rebar futures for Oct’21 delivery witnessed a sharp decline of RMB 81/t ($12/t), settling at RMB 5,373/t ($831/t) on 4 Aug. On a weekly basis, these have fallen by around RMB 300/t ($58/t).
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