- Buyer caution persists on muted steel demand
- China’s rebar prices soften amid weak trading
Mysteel Global: Feng Hsin Steel, Taiwan’s largest rebar producer, headquartered in Taichung in Central Taiwan, has decided to roll over its rebar list prices and buying prices of local scrap again for transactions over 25-29 August, an official with the company confirmed.
For the current week’s business discussions, Feng Hsin is offering 13-mm dia rebar at TWD 17,200/tonne (t) ($564/t) exw, while its procurement price for local HMS 80:20 scrap remains at TWD 8,300/t ($271/t), the official said.
This roll-over came as prices for global scrap delivered to Taiwan held steady. As of 25 August, US-origin HMS 80:20 scrap was assessed at $310/t CFR Taiwan, unchanged w-o-w, while Japan-origin H2 scrap also stayed flat w-o-w at $315/t CFR Taiwan, a local source said.
Market participants said that many local mini-mills, such as Feng Hsin, are preferring to maintain stable rebar list prices for now amid the wait-and-watch sentiment in the market, with demand in Taiwan still muted during the summer. Some also predicted that rebar prices could lose momentum in the short term unless consumption picks up.
Meanwhile, on the Chinese mainland, spot rebar prices continued to soften w-o-w on weakened fundamentals, Mysteel Global notes.
As of Monday, China’s national prices of HRB400E 20-mm dia rebars, for example, were assessed by Mysteel at RMB 3,354/t ($468/t), including 13% VAT, lower by RMB 15/t ($2/t) w-o-w.
Transactions of construction steel in the physical market remained sluggish, weighed down by weak end-user consumption and fading speculative demand. The spot trading volume of rebars, wire rods, and bars-in-coil among the 237 trading houses across China under Mysteel’s tracking registered 98,313 t/day on average over 19-25 August, a drop of 19.4% from the same period last year.
Note: This article has been written in accordance with a content exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and BigMint.
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