Nickel market participants cite technical squeezes as the root cause of a 9% increase in nickel prices over June, with Shanghai and London exchange contracts targeted amid slack supply and demand.The LME three-month nickel price peaked at $12,850 per tonne on the morning of Monday July 1, its highest since April and an increase of more than 9% from a low of $11,605 per tonne on June 7.Despite a 2....Read More
Key data from the pricing sessions in Asia and Europe for the week ended Friday June 28ChinaChina's silicon export price slides on signs of a weakening domestic market due to more supply and limited bookings for July cargoes. Sellers open to cheaper bids to achieve sales early in expectation of slow demand in the summer lull and increasing supply during rainy season. Most refiners in Yunnan provin...Read More
Trade log for cobalt sulfate in China including transactions, bids and offers reported to Fastmarkets MB. Fastmarkets MB prices Click here for Fastmarket MB's price assessment for cobalt sulfate, Co 20.5% basis, China ex-works, yuan/tonne Click here for Fastmarket MB's price assessment for the cobalt sulfate, Co 20.5% basis China ex-works, adjustment to the standard-grade cobalt low-end price, $/I...Read More
Despite China's ban of low-quality copper scrap imports since the beginning of 2019, the volume of copper units contained in scrap imports has defied expectations by rising in the first five months of this year. Between January and May this year, China imported 682,508 gross tonnes of copper scrap, according to customs data. All of the imports are of the higher-grade category 6 scrap. This is down...Read More
Turkish steel producers continued to book more deep-sea scrap cargoes for August shipments, with prices rising further, sources said on Monday July 1.A steel mill in the Marmara region booked a Baltic Sea cargo, comprising 20,000 tonnes of HMS 1&2 (80:20) at $293 per tonne and 20,000 tonnes of bonus at $303 per tonne cfr, late on June 28.The same mill also booked a European cargo on Friday, compri...Read More
Turkish domestic scrap prices remained largely steady over the past week, sources told Fastmarkets on Monday July 1, with most steel producers keeping their buy prices unchanged. However, domestic scrap prices are expected to recover from this point on, in line with the upturn in the imported scrap values, they added.Only two steel mills have slightly reduced their buy prices - for auto...Read More
The outcome of the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Japan that was held on June 28-29, saw the United States and China agree to resume trade talks, which has boosted optimism for a trade deal. This has given most non-haven markets a lift, this despite further weakness in manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) data.China's Caixin manufacturing PMI dropped to 49.4 from 50.2, Japan's manufacturing...Read More
Import prices for flat-rolled steel products have shown broad increases in South America over the past week, with more expensive offers heard from China, although deals remained scarce because of the cautious stances adopted by importers in the region and by Chinese exporters.Fastmarkets' assessment of the South American import price for hot-rolled coil (HRC) was $535-545 per tonne cfr on June 28....Read More
The export market for hot-rolled coil and cold-rolled coil (HRC, CRC) from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has been moderate during the week ending on Monday July 1, but the plate export price has increased.Fastmarkets' weekly price assessment for HRC exported from the CIS was $470-485 per tonne fob Black Sea on July 1, unchanged week on week.Steel mills in the CIS have closed their s...Read More
Turkey imported 581,338 tonnes of flat steel in May 2019, down by 32.49% from the corresponding month in 2018, when 861,166 tonnes arrived in the country, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (T?oeIK).Sources who spoke with Fastmarkets noted that demand for flat steel in Turkey was weak in January and February, before the local elections were held on March 31. So, import volumes decrease...Read More
Merchant bar quality (MBQ) steel prices in the United States' domestic market have dropped once again after mill cuts in mid-June, and market sentiment remains mostly bearish with some sources anticipating further reductions. Nucor Corp, Bayou Steel Group and Gerdau Long Steel North America announced price reductions of $40 per short ton ($2 per hundredweight) effective Thursday June 13. ...Read More
ArcelorMittal has begun the revamp of a blast furnace in Brazil earlier than planned, and has also temporarily stopped operations at a rebar facility in the country due to market conditions.On June 23, the company started a 70-day maintenance outage at its No2 blast furnace in Tubar??o, in the southeast Brazilian state of Esp?-rito Santo.The stoppage had been planned for August-September.The reaso...Read More
Trineck?(C) ? 3/4 elez??rny shrugged off "the difficult situation on the steel market" to exceed expectation in its full-year results, it said last week, but the Czech Republic steelmaker warned of stronger headwinds this year.It reported a profit of 3.33 billion Czech krone ($148.77 million) after tax for 2018, while revenues from the sale of products, services and goods of 40.496 billion krone w...Read More
Turkish steel producers continued to book more deep-sea scrap cargoes for August shipments, with prices rising further, sources said on Monday July 1.A steel mill in the Marmara region booked a Baltic Sea cargo, comprising 20,000 tonnes of HMS 1&2 (80:20) at $293 per tonne and 20,000 tonnes of bonus at $303 per tonne cfr, late on June 28.The same mill also booked a European cargo on Friday, compri...Read More
In the process of standardizing the names of its prices, Fastmarkets has found that the unit of measurement on some of its value-in-use iron ore indices was displaying incorrectly.In the four indices listed in the table below, the unit of measure had been listed as US cents per tonne or US dollars per dry metric tonne unit (dmtu). The correct value, to which the indices have now been standardized,...Read More
Turkish domestic scrap prices remained largely steady over the past week, sources told Fastmarkets on Monday July 1, with most steel producers keeping their buy prices unchanged. However, domestic scrap prices are expected to recover from this point on, in line with the upturn in the imported scrap values, they added.Only two steel mills have slightly reduced their buy prices - for auto...Read More
CIS steel billet producers continued to increase their offer prices for foreign customers on Monday July 1, following the recent surge in import scrap prices in Turkey and iron ore prices in China.This pushed up Fastmarkets' daily CIS export billet index to $420 per tonne fob Black Sea on Monday, against $415 per tonne fob on June 28.Offers of Russian billet were heard in the market within the pri...Read More
Import prices for steel slab in Southeast Asia and East Asia were slightly lower over the week to July 1, although market participants were optimistic that prices were bottoming out amid a recovery in the Chinese flat steel markets and rising raw material costs.Downstream flat steel producers are likely to follow their Chinese counterparts in increasing prices amid the rebound in the Chinese steel...Read More
Prices for Chinese rebar increased sharply on Monday July 1 in both the domestic and export markets following signs of an improvement in trade relations between China and the United States over the weekend.Domestic Eastern China (Shanghai): 4,030-4,070 yuan ($587-593) per tonne, up 70 yuan per tonneNorthern China (Beijing): 3,950-3,990 yuan per tonne, up 100-110 yuan per tonneUS President Donald T...Read More
ArcelorMittal finalized the sale of a number of its European steel assets to Liberty House Group on June 30, the world's biggest steelmaker said on Monday July 1.The sale was part of the divestment package agreed with the European Commission (EC) investigation into ArcelorMittal's acquisition of Italian flat steel producer Ilva.Assets in the sale to Liberty House include a steel pla...Read More