For the first time since the beginning of the year prices relevant to scrap and some semis have lost ground. However the turn around was basically affecting Black Sea and surrounding regions like Balkans and, this was mainly due to Turkish mills decision of suspending purchases.
Longs and flats steel product markets at Black Sea moved in different directions last week. It looks like the longs producers have overheated the market for themselves and suffered the inevitable and after producers have lost momentum a little bit and now the ball is in buyers’ side.
Ukrainian steel billet sellers have broken the market for themselves as a lot of companies were keeping out of the market till the last moment expecting to get some premium to the price. When players came to the market with the price USD 645 per tonne to USD 660 per tonne, it was just not accepted. It became obvious that the situation on the market is not a mirror of the year before last year as supplies of finished longs for the last months were just led by semis.
Previously, billet offers at USD 635 per tonne to USD 645 per tonne, even USD 660, were shots in the air without real demand. When suppliers started to come back to the market buyers moved back from USD 625 per tonne to USD 630 per tonne, that they were ready to pay a weak before, and now to USD 600 per tonne to USD 620 per tonne. However confidence still prevails among billet sellers that price will not break USD 600 line, but who knows? There is a lot of information about what sellers or buyers wish or not wish, but haven’t heard about deals yet.
For finished longs, we can just comment that they are following semis and there are no special factors there as such.
For flats the situation looks totally different. Black Sea based flat products have, on the contrary continued their march towards higher price levels with Ukrainian and Russian Mills being in pole position.
The quotations from the previous week seem to have been accepted by buyers. We have heard of actual shipments of HRC from Ukraine at USD 700 per tonne to USD 710 per tonne and from Russia at USD 730 per tonne to USD 740 per tonne. The latest achieved prices for CR are at USD 800 per tonne to USD 820 per tonne for Ukrainian material and USD 850 per tonne to USD 860 per tonne for Russian origin.
From this point of view it also should be important that in Ukraine the May break can be really short. No more than usual weekend, maybe just +one extra day or something. Unlike previous years there are no rulings from the Cabinet of Ministers to merge some days to have more than 1 week of holidays. Prime minister just recently said that there was the crisis and we must work.