India: Re-bar Units running below 50% Capacity in Major Regions

Low demand of finished Long steel products from the end-users has forced the Re-bar units to run at below 50% capacity in major regions like Western & Central Region.

The real-estate and infrastructure sectors are the biggest buyers of Re-bar and these sectors are also struggling owing to liquidity crunch in the market. Major Markets running below Capacity

• Mumbai Re-bar units are running at around 40-50% capacity
• Raipur Re-bar units are running at around 25-30% capacity and few shutdown the operations since last 1-week

A Re-bar manufacturer based at Raipur stated, “We had closed the operations for more than 10 days owing to very low demand, as products are not even trading at lowest price.”   As per the manufacturer at Mumbai, “Due to low demand of finished Long products, we are running our plant for 12 hours per day and that too only in the night shift and holding an inventory for around 7-10 days.” A Jalna based manufacturer said, “Most of the units are going to run 8 hours per day from 1 Aug, 2014 owing to high raw material (Scrap) prices and low demand of Re-bar.” Few Major Secondary Re-bar Brands offers at Basic Prices

• Raipur based Goel TMT is offering 12 mm at INR 35,100/MT
• Shree Vaishnav Alloys based in Mumbai is offering 12 mm Re-bar at INR 34,700/MT

There is shortage of Sponge in the market owing to low production of Iron ore, which likely to support semi finish (Ingot & Billet) and finished Long products (Re-bar) for short duration.

Price Change of MS Ingot & Re-bar for July, 2014