SteelMint: India Steel Composite Index stays flat

SteelMint’s India Steel Composite Index continued to remain flat with most of the flat steel and long steel sub-indices remaining unchanged on the week. However, on a monthly comparison, the same has dropped by 2% due to sluggish trade activities.

The India Steel Composite Index is backed by robust calculation methodologies and is derived from the long steel and flat steel composite indices. The Index serves as a benchmark for end-users, EPC contractors, and manufacturers in the iron and steel industry to settle contracts or understand the market cost of physical supply of commodities such as rebar, wire rod, structurals, HRC, CRC, plates as well as galvanised plates.

• The Composite Index is assessed on a weekly basis: every Friday at 18:30 IST, as per the weighted average prices based on manufacturing capacity and production.
• SteelMint considers the Composite Index with the base year being 3 Jan’20 (financial year 2019-2020) and the base value as 100.
• The Composite Index doesn’t give the absolute price.
• The Indian steel industry is broadly classified into the BF-BOF and the electric/induction furnace routes. Keeping this broad classification in view, SteelMint proposes to release the Composite Index by considering both production routes by manufacturing capacity and the production weighted method to compute the index for India. For details click to view the methodology document.

India Steel Composite Index stands unchanged

The index was assessed at 154.4 on 07 Dec’21, unchanged on the week, but down 2% on the month.

The Flat Steel index stood at 166.8, slightly up from 166.7 in the previous week. Trade activities picked up slightly with some distribution network participants coming out to restock, pushing prices of hot-rolled coils (HRC) and plates (HR plate) upwards this week. On the other hand, demand continued to remain lacklustre for cold-rolled coils (CRC) and galvanised plain coils (GPC).

Indian steel producers announced a roll-over in their list prices for Jan’22 sales with prices of HRCs at $64,000-64,500/t ($862-869/t) and CRCs at $70,000-71,000/t ($943-956/t). This has boosted the market sentiments a bit. However, the list prices of HRCs are down by around INR 3,000-3,500/t ($40-47/t) and CRCs by around INR 4,000/t ($54/t) from those for the early Dec’21 sales.

On the contrary, the Steel Long index moved down marginally to 142.4 this week against 142.7 a week back. However, a further increase in prices of feedstock such as billets and sponge iron continued to boost prices in both the integrated and electric/induction furnace steel markets. Also, there was a slight increase in inquiries in the trade market that supported prices. But the pace of demand growth continues to remain slow.