Taiwan’s largest rebar producer Feng Hsin Steel, headquartered in Taichung, Central Taiwan, has decided to roll over its rebar list price and procurement price for locally-sourced scrap over the March 23-27 period to monitor market changes in the global scrap market for the coming term, a company official confirmed on Tuesday.
Thus, for the business till this Friday, Feng Hsin is continuing to offer its 13mm dia rebar at TWD 14,800/tonne ($490/t) ex-works and paying TWD 6,600/t for locally sourced HMS 1&2 80:20 scrap, according to the official. The mill had trimmed the two prices over the prior two weeks consecutively, Mysteel Global notes.
Although the steelmaker has shied away from reducing its rebar list price and procurement price for locally-sourced scrap this week, “the downward trend (in the two prices) will be unmistakable in the next few days,” Feng Hsin’s official predicted, adding that scrap prices in the global market have weakened persistently over the past week, while sales of steel long products have not seen any improvement so far.
As of March 23, the price of US-sourced HMS 1&2 80:20 scrap, a key price reference for Taiwan’s scrap and rebar markets, was at $220/t CFR Taiwan, down another $10/t on week and hitting a new low since last year. That for Japanese H2 scrap also slid by $7/t from one week earlier to $230/t CFR Taiwan, according to the official.
“New orders (for construction steel) were close to zero last week, even though construction sites in Taiwan had remained in normal operation during that period,” Feng Hsin’s official disclosed, explaining that most long steel buyers had returned to the market just to gauge where the bottom price might be – instead of placing orders immediately – as they believed that rebar prices would soon follow the downward trend in global scrap prices.
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between SteelMint Research & Mysteel Global.
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