The Turkish wire rod market has been characterized by silence during the current week. In particular, local end-users were concerned at the beginning of the week by the softening in some producers' offers to the domestic market, since they feared that prices could decrease further after any purchases they might make.
While several end-users have purchased material at the new price levels, some others have continued to buy at last week's levels as they failed to catch the current market. Looking at the end-user finished steel sales side, it is said that there is a significant uptrend in nail demand in Turkey and its neighboring countries. In the local Turkish market, the Central Anatolia region - Ankara in particular - is being considered as a major destination for finished steel product sales due to ongoing construction projects. Besides, Turkey is currently registering lively trade activity with Libya due to the speed-up in the latter's construction projects.
It seems that the difficulties regarding wire rod supply experienced in recent weeks in southern Turkey have been resolved. However, Turkish wire rod sales activity to the Middle East is slowing down as there are competitive Chinese offers to this region for wire rod and for the finished steel products produced from wire rod. Buyers in the Middle East are now adopted a cautious approach to the Turkish export wire rod offers, due to the competitiveness of the Chinese offers. Wire rod prices had been stable for a long time in the local Saudi Arabian market and it is expected in this market that deals of low carbon wire rods concluded from China at $520/mt C&F in September will be delivered in October. However, traders' offers for ex-China material for new deals are currently at lower price levels compared to the abovementioned.
Meanwhile, Turkish export offers for mesh quality wire rods are standing at $490-510/mt FOB. A significant decrease has been observed in the volume of price inquiries from the Far Eastern markets to Turkey, since natural disasters have affected the countries in the Far East and also since there is pressure from competitive ex-China offers. It is reported that talks are continuing in order to maintain the flow of orders from the US and are aimed at removing the reluctance of traders as regards the conclusion of new deals. Furthermore, there is still interest coming from Greece as the price levels in this country are a bit higher than in other European countries. Also, it is heard that there has been an increase again in the number of price inquiries from West Africa. It is heard that a few deals have been concluded for small tonnages following these price inquiries coming from West Africa.
Turning to the southern European WR market, sluggishness has continued to be observed this week, while wire rod buyers in Portugal in particular are following a wait-and-see policy. In the Portuguese domestic market, price levels of previously ordered wire rods are currently at €370-380/mt delivered to customer. However, it is mentioned that in Portugal there has been some tightening in demand for wire rod, while some reluctance to buy imports has also been observed.
In general, deliveries of previously concluded wire rod deals have continued this week, with Turkish producers' wire rod export order books being relatively fuller compared to their rebar export order books. Meanwhile, talks are continuing for new deals.