Tuesday, October 26,
Billet prices in the Black Sea region rose this week on the back of broad production cutbacks and stabilizing scrap prices, with good demand coming from the Middle East, traders said.
Traders quoted Black Sea free-on-board (fob) billet at around $530-535/ tonne, from $510-525/tonne last week. “Production has been cut worldwide,” a trader in Europe said. “That probably has helped to keep prices at the levels they are at.”
There was demand strength in the Middle East and North Africa. But traders underlined it was suppliers pushing prices higher, as well as the pull of demand, supporting prices.
“Any mill that produces billet and rebar needs the price to increase,” she said. “I’m not sure anyone has confidence anything will hold at the moment and everyone is watching the scrap price like a hawk.”
Scrap prices in Turkey, one of the world’s top consumers of the steel-making material, stood at around $375 a tonne, little changed from quotes of $355-375 a tonne last week.
A trader said the biggest pickup for steel demand is likely to be in Turkey, adding that consumption was also good in the Middle East region.
“We’ve seen quite a lot of demand coming out of Syria,” he said, adding demand was weak in Europe and Brazil and picking up in other parts of Latin America.
In Asia, China’s iron ore imports are expected to rise for the rest of the year as steel mills embark on a period of restocking, a mining association official said.
Source: Reuters
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