The beginning of the month has seen a sluggish start for the longs market in southern Europe, with a persistent weak demand and prices that are still failing to rise.
In the local rebar market in Italy, there have been more offers around €320/mt ex-works base (€585/mt ex-works including regular extras), placed “just to confirm some orders”, although some producers are still offering around €330/mt ex-works (€595/mt ex-works including regular extras), claiming that going below this level would be impossible due to excessively high production costs. The range of offers has thus decreased by €20/mt on the upper end, but some producers are starting to talk about possible plant shutdowns, and overall, the start of March seems to be slow with few clear ideas.
Confirmed in the local wire rod segment in Italy, a decrease of about €10/mt on offers, as anticipated last week, but not comparable to the decline in the rebar segment. Furthermore, according to some sources, buyers across Europe continue to demand a lower price. "From my point of view, nothing will move until around March 20th," commented an Italian source.
Regarding the export segment, according to a Greek source, a producer is offering €610-620/mt FOB for ex-Greece rebar and around €630-640/mt FOB ex-Greece for wire rod. Ex-Spain rebar seems to have been offered at €640/mt CFR Baltics, or about €610-615/mt FOB, an increase of about €10/mt compared to the last offers reported at the beginning of February. Lower prices are seen in ex-Italy offers via truck, where they have been reported at €580/mt ex-works for rebar, with few volumes closed at a time, while demand via ship has been described as "almost absent".
Import offers, finally, have been reported as decreasing; ex-Egypt offers have been reported at €560-565/mt CFR southern Europe for rebar (down by about €10/mt week-on-week) and €570-580/mt CFR for wire rod; ex-Turkey offers have also been reported down by €10/mt for rebar, currently offered at €565-575/mt CFR, and for wire rod, currently at €585-595/mt CFR.