SteelMint has heard from its market sources that the operations in Hyundai Steel’s Dangjin plant had completely stopped due to an accident that occurred on 13 Dec’17. The accident was reported to have taken place in the rolling mill of a hot rolled mill and the operations of the mill were reported to be stalled for 10 to 15 days.The company had stopped its re-bar plant in a district on 14 Dec’17, B and C hot rolling mills on 18 Dec’17.
The Hyundai Steel’s Dangjin plant is a hot-rolled coil plant with an annual production capacity of 1 MnT (which is about 3,500 MT per day). With the disruption of operations of the Hyundai Steel’s hot rolling mill, market feared a reduction of about 30,000-40,000 MT of steel in coming days.
However, as per the latest updates, the company has resumed operations of its B and C hot rolling mill today’s afternoon.And as the large scale B and C hot rolling mill operations have been normalized just within two days of its closure, the concern about the disruption in hot rolled supplies of the company is quite unlikely.
Sources have further informed that a hot rolled and reinforced steel lines located in A-Z zone continues to remain close as the same are still undergoing safety inspections. The resumption time of these units are unknown.
South Korea’s HRC offers and finish steel exports
The current offers for HRC from South Korea are heard to be at USD 580-590/MT FoB basis and the same are heard to be at USD 615-620/MT, CFR India basis.
As per the South Korea’s customs data, country’s finish steel export from Jan to Nov’17 stands at 20.38 MnT. The country’s exports are mainly targeted to China (15%) followed by Japan (14%) and India (11%).
South Korea’s Quarterly Finish Steel Exports in 2017
| Time Period | Export Volume (in MnT) |
| 1st Quarter (Jan’17 – Mar’17) | 5.72 |
| 2nd Quarter (Apr’17 – Jun’17) | 5.52 |
| 3rd Quarter (Jul’17 – Sep’17) | 5.81 |
| 4th Quarter* (Oct’17 – Nov’17) | 3.33 |
| Total | 20.38 |
Dec’17 export nos are awaited
Source: Customs
Hyundai Steel may place fresh bids for Japanese scrap-Last bids for H2 grade scrap put by Hyundai Steel was at Yen 35,500/MT, FoB Japan. However few South Korean mills had placed bids at around Yen 36,000-36,500/MT, FoB Japan. As per market sources, Hyundai Steel is likely to raise its offers for Japanese scrap in a day or two and book the cargo as the company has resumed operations at its B & C rolling mills today
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