Posted on 12 Jul 2023
Formosa Ha Tinh Steel (FHS) has raised its monthly domestic hot rolled coil prices by $10/tonne, Kallanish notes.
The mill announced on Tuesday that its skin-passed SAE 1006 HRC for August/September shipments is pegged at $595-615/tonne cif Ho Chi Minh (HCMC)/Hai Phong port. Its non-skin passed SAE 1006 HRC is tagged at $5/t lower. Its price for pipemaking or SS400 grade HRC is at $590-600/t cif Vietnam.
The company sets lower prices for larger orders. For example, the lower price of $595/t cif applies to orders of a minimum of 20,000 tonnes of skin-passed SAE 1006 HRC, while the highest price, $615/t, is for bookings of less than 500t.
The price hike is "reasonable," a HCMC trader says. Vietnamese mills need non-China-origin HRC in order to export to the US because of trade measures, he notes. Another agrees that exporting re-rollers will be able to accept the higher prices. “For the local market, they will use Chinese SAE1006 which is cheaper,” he explains. Chinese SAE 1006 HRC offers are prevailing at $570-580/t cfr Vietnam.
Another HCMC trader says the market pre-empted FHS's latest prices because the other Vietnamese producer, Hoa Phat, raised its domestic prices by $10/t last week to around $580/t cfr. "Buyers are still cautious. I think the order volumes are not big because demand has not yet improved," she notes. She expects prices to remain rangebound with no sharp drops or increases.
Source:Kallanish
