Price uptrend has still been observed in the Turkish domestic and export merchant bar markets in the past week. Ongoing raw material and domestic/imported semi finished steel price uptrend are still the main reason behind the movement.
While offer price levels of merchant bars in the local Turkish market in the past week have been at TRY 815-870/mt ($542-578/mt) ex-works, on actual weight basis and excluding VAT, demand has been at medium levels. Turkish lira against US dollar has also been effective over the price uptrend.
Price levels in Turkey have registered uptrend also on export side in the past week; however demand has slightly decreased. While the most of the deals have been on contained basis, North Africa, Middle East and the US have still been the leading markets for Turkish merchant bar.
Due to the fact that billet prices have been strong because of strong scrap, producers are being pushed for increasing the finished steel prices. Billet prices are an important challenge for rolling mills in particular. While they are having difficulties in finding billets with acceptable levels, they are also having troubles with billet prices given by the semi finished producers (that have been working to the Far East markets) to the local market.
On the other hand, import billet prices and shipment length are other challenges for the Turkish merchant bar producers. Due to the fact that the CIS producers' billet offers are for October shipments, Turkish buyers are hesitant in buying billet from this region.
It is mentioned that the market in general may see some slowness in Turkey and Middle East as Ramadan starts as of late this week in these regions.