While a softening in offers in the Turkish domestic and export merchant bar markets has in the past week been observed, there has a been stable trend in some regions of southern Europe and there has been uptrend in other southern European regions.
Under the influence of weak finished product demand, scrap and purchase activity of Turkey has slowed down, this situation has had more effect on scrap prices (rather than billet prices) in Turkey and related to this, merchant bar prices have softened in Turkish domestic and export long markets. While the demand is trouble in Turkish domestic market, buyers have still been experiencing hard times as the prices have been fluctuating. In the Turkish domestic merchant bar market, different price levels among the regions have still been there in the past week, while the price levels have been in general at TRY 740-820/mt ($479-530/mt) ex-works.
On the other hand, the merchant bar export prices had been at almost same levels with rebars in the past weeks; however, this picture has changed in the last two weeks and merchant bar prices have gone over rebar prices again thanks to the demand downtrend for rebar. Meanwhile, merchant bar export prices have softened in Turkey in the past week to the levels of $480-500/mt FOB in general. Turkish producers, who have been offering mostly for mid/late July, have been monitoring the silence in the market in recent weeks.
On the southern European side, it is observed that the producers have been trying to increase the prices. While some producers in Spain have increased their prices by €40/mt in the past week they referred the raw material prices for this movement. Although this price increase has been reflected to the price lists, it is observed that the deals are being concluded at lower levels depending on the serious customers and large tonnages. In Italy, producers have tried to increase the prices; however, they almost failed as the demand is too weak in the market. In the Italian local market, merchant bar prices are currently at €400-430/mt ex-works, excluding VAT, while they are being offered to Greece in exports at €380-390/mt CFR.
In short, while the various trends have been commanding the European and Turkish merchant bar markets, the common point is the lack of demand. Although some activity is sometimes being observed, the end user demand is at low levels in general in the abovementioned markets. Additionally, tonnages in the deals are not at desired levels.