Indian Steel Market Highlights, Week 34

During the week (14-19th Aug), the prices moved up sharply of across all products in the country. The rise in the offers was supported by the increasing global prices and shortage of material in domestic market.

Another reason supported for the rising semi finished & finished steel prices is due to the increase in the production cost like rising coking coal, scrap, sponge & pig iron prices.

Raw Material Offers Increase Further: Odisha based major private miners increased their iron ore offers up to INR 300/MT (USD 5) for rest of Aug’17 deliveries.

Further, Pellet offers in the domestic market increased because of the improved demand of pellet over lumps due to the monsoon. Also, the Indian exporters have become active owing to improved demand from the Chinese Buyers. The export offers for the week increase to around USD 96-97/MT, FoB.

Indian manufacturers prefer the domestic scrap rather than the imported owing to the sharp hike in imported scarp offers and the importers of ferrous scrap have opted in for wait and watch mode due to these sharp hike in the offers.

Coking Coal Offers Marginally Increase: Strong import demand and the rising steel prices in the global market have continued to trigger upward momentum to Coking Coal prices. Offers raised around USD 2-3/MT to USD 206-207/MT, CFR India.

Semis Finished Offers Strengthens Over a week Duration: Owing to supply crunch with strong demand the sponge iron (DRI) and billet offers continues it rally in offers and rose around INR 400-800/MT (USD 6-13) in DRI and around INR 300-700/MT (USD 4-11) in billet offers.

Billet is being actively exported from Indian Ports owing to strong demand following supply crunch of Chinese billets and higher offers by other export countries. SAIL’s latest Tender helped Indian billet export offers to rise further and are assessed at USD 500-505/MT against last week assessment at USD 490/MT, FoB India.

Second time in a row Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd (NINL) revised the Pig Iron Offers and raised their offers up to INR 1,250/MT (USD 19-20) second time in a month.

Finish Long Offers Further Rise: Rebar offers continue to rise due to higher input cost but the demand remained subdued. In a week’s duration the rebar offers increased up to INR 900/MT (USD 14-15).

Market participants believe that, prices to gain momentum after monsoon.

Further, it has been heard that the large scale steel makers like SAIL, RINL have further increased their offers by INR 500-700/MT owing to rising input cost.

Finish Flat Offers Rise at a Faster Pace: Indian flat steel offers are continuously increasing owing to good demand in the domestic as well as in global market.

Indian Large Steel Makers have increased their flat steel offers up to INR 1,000/MT (USD 16). The Indian exporters have also followed the suit and increased their HRC Export offers around USD 40-50/MT in a week’s duration.

Indian Raw material and Finished Steel reference Prices as on 19th Aug (Week 34)

Prices are Ex-works, Exclusive of GST at 18%

Indian Export Reference Prices

Sources: SteelMint Research