South Korea’s blast furnace (BF) mills, Posco and Hyundai Steel forecasted that the prices of hot rolled coil (HRC) would rise further in global market, driven by the rising production costs.
It’s known that the Q2 contract prices of iron ore and coking coal have increased sharply; accordingly, steel mills’ production costs of molten iron have soared by US$150/ton as well.
Furthermore, the spot prices of iron ore have presented the upward trend recently. It’s predicted that the global steel mills would hike the prices to reflect the high production cost definitely.
However, South Korean cold rolling mills put different point of view from the BF mills, they predicted that the price hike for HRC was limited as China’s white goods production has remained at low level and the cold rolled coil prices have been down in global market.
( Source: www.Yieh.com )