Chinese Steel Market Analysis for Week Ending December 4th

In the past week, China markets still stood at high levels and price fluctuations are too big.

Iron ore prices stood at $81.85 per ton last Monday and billets at RMB2780/mt; All touched their highest level this year.

Below are price details of Platts 62% index and spot billets for your information:

As mentioned in our last report, steel mills can’t low down their EXW prices heavily due to high cost of ram materials. Even through Hebei Group and Shagang all made unchanged for their EXW prices of third-ten days of Nov but other smaller steel mills still kept increasing spot prices. In last week, Hebei Group and Shagang increased their EXP prices again, especially Shagang HRC was increased by RMB700/mt in one go! The market got confidence from this news and spot price went up sharply.

We also mentioned that China government send two teams to Heibei and Jiangsu provice to check the execution of cut steel capacity and some steel mills in Shandong province started to stop production. Last week the weather still very bad and near all the steel mills in Heibei/Shanxi province were ordered to stop production.

Yesterday weather of North China turned well and accordingly spot billets price went down by RMB60 on Saturday but we think market will not drop heavily in Dec. The reason is that many main steel mills like Benxi, Baosteel, Rizhao etc will release new prices soon and traders’ stock order before Spring Festival.

For export offer, we give below indication just for your reference:

Billets: USD405/MT FOB
HRC: USD500/MT FOB
De-bar: 425/MT FOB
Wire rod:435/MT FOB