Posted on 04 Apr 2023
Shagang Group (Shagang), China's largest privately-owned steelmaker headquartered in East China's Jiangsu province, is rolling over its list prices of rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil for sales over April 1-10 from the prior period, the steelmaker announced on April 1.
The decision means Shagang has now kept prices of its major long steel products unchanged for two successive ten-day sales cycles, Mysteel Global notes.
Consequently, the steel giant's HRB400 16-22mm rebar is still priced at Yuan 4,450/tonne ($646/t) for early April, its HPB300 6-10mm high-speed wire rod remains at Yuan 4,560/t, and HRB400 8-10mm bar-in-coil stays at Yuan 4,700/t, all in terms of EXW and including the 13% VAT.
As for spot rebar prices, the price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar in the Shanghai market, a major market for Shagang's products, has declined by Yuan 60/t from March 20 to reach Yuan 4,260/t including the VAT as of March 31. This is still Yuan 190/t lower than Shagang's corresponding ex-works price, Mysteel Global noted.
"China's steel market is rangebound currently, with some market participants fretting about steel demand conditions during April," a Shanghai-based source remarked.
In late March, spot sales of rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 Chinese steel trading houses under Mysteel's tracking averaged 165,807 tonnes/day, representing a 0.2% dip from the previous ten days.
On Monday, rebar futures prices in Shanghai's futures market witnessed a large decline, partly as China's Caixin Purchasing Managers' Index for the manufacturing industry in March had dropped by 1.6 percentage points on month to 50. The result fell short of market expectations and indicated the country's factory activity growth has slowed down, a market source said.
In addition, "major mills in (North and East China's) Hebei and Shandong had successfully cut coke procurement prices by Yuan 50-100/t effective April 1, with the result that rebar lost some support from steelmaking raw materials prices," he added.
The price of the most-traded rebar contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange for October delivery declined by 3.1% or Yuan 130/t from last Friday's settlement price to close at Yuan 4,019/t when ending the daytime trading session on April 3.
Source:Mysteel Global
