The imported billets market in South East Asia remained muted in the absence of active trade. Rising Covid cases in the Philippines continued to weigh on buying inquiries for imported billets. SteelMint’s bi-weekly assessment of imported billets into the Philippines stands at $690/tonne(t), CFR Manila, down by $20-25/t w-o-w.
Market highlights
- Vietnam’s BF-route billet export offers were heard at around $685-690/t FoB Vietnam. Also, an IF (induction furnace)-route billet export deal from Vietnam was heard to be concluded at $695/t CFR China scheduled for Sep’21 shipments.
- There were unconfirmed reports of 10,000-15,000 t of Indonesia origin billets being booked for China. However, prices could not be confirmed till the time of publishing this report. Interestingly, billet exports from Indonesia increased sharply to 1.58 mn t in H1CY’21 from 0.41 mn t in H1CY’20. Exports to China doubled to 0.88 mn t in H1CY’21 from 0.4 mn t in H1CY’20. Other major importers of billets from Indonesia were Taiwan and the Philippines at 0.17 and 0.10 mn t respectively.
- Indicative imported billet offers into Thailand are hovering in the range of $715/t CFR from various origins. Iranian mills continued to remain absent from the seaborne billet market due to power outages.
- This week, two Indian State-owned steelmakers had floated an export tender of steel blooms each. According to sources, the tenders were cancelled due to bid-offer disparities. The cancellation of floated tenders could also be because of strong fluctuations in the Chinese steel futures on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) showing an overwhelming downtrend for the last couple of days. However, SHFE rebar futures’ Oct contract inched up by RMB 6/t d-o-d on 6 Aug’21 to close at RMB 5,379/t.
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