Sentiments in the Asian billet market have worsened somewhat recently, which has led to a decline in ASEAN mills’ official export offers. However, the latest deal prices have remained almost stable, signaling that significant declines are not considered reasonable for sellers, since a part of materials for March shipment has already sold out and raw material prices are still relatively high.
Ex-Indonesia 3SP billet official offers are at $530-533/FOB this week, down from $540-545/mt FOB announced ten days ago. At the same time, a few market sources report a 50,000 mt sale by the mill at $528/mt FOB last week. The destination for these volumes is unknown and market sources agree that it should be for a trader’s long position. The previous ex-Indonesia deals were reported by SteelOrbis at $529-535/mt FOB depending on the destination. “$530/mt [FOB] is a more real offer for the current market, and most sales at around this level done over the past few weeks were for Western markets. Asia is not active before the Lunar New Year holiday,” a Singapore-based source said.
At the same time, one ex-Malaysia billet deal has also been rumored as having been done by a mill to a trader at $530-532/mt FOB last week. However, the details have not been available by the time of publication. Two large traders believe that this was a deal done earlier for 30,000 mt to Turkey, but three international traders said that it seems to be a new deal and the volume may be smaller.
The ex-China reference price for 3SP billet has remained at the level of late last week at $525-530/mt FOB. Average domestic billet prices in China have posted a minor increase by RMB 15/mt ($2/mt) over the past week to RMB 3,653/mt ex-warehouse.
In the import billet market in Southeast Asia, bids for 5SP BF billet have fallen to $530/mt CFR, versus last week’s reference price of $533-537/mt CFR. Market sources do not expect that demand for billets in Asia will improve before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, though some customers may buy cheaper sources like Iran or Russia, but only in the case of discounts. Previous deals for both these origins were at $520-525/mt CFR, while “the fair price would be $510-515/mt CFR now,” one Asian source commented.