Posted on 07 Sep 2023
Chinese prices of nickel pig iron (NPI) kept stable over the past week, supported by the higher production costs being shouldered by domestic NPI smelters, with the price of 8-10% grade NPI in East China's Jiangsu province under Mysteel's assessment staying at Yuan 1,180/mtu ($161/mtu) including delivery and the 13% VAT as of September 5, unchanged from one week before.
In view of their higher smelting costs and shrinking profit margins, domestic NPI smelters refused to lower their offering prices of the ferroalloy, even though transactions in the physical market were sparse.
Stainless steel producers were reluctant to purchase more NPI at such high prices given the fluctuation in stainless prices and lackluster demand from end-users, Mysteel Global learned.
As of August 31, total stainless inventories at the 42 warehouses in Wuxi and the 25 in Foshan under Mysteel's regular tracking, China's two core stainless trading hubs, had mounted for the third consecutive week to reach 888,581 tonnes, higher by another 2.4% from the prior week and underscoring the depression in stainless sales, according to Mysteel's latest weekly survey.
China's nickel concentrate prices continued rising during the past week with the higher offering prices of overseas mines. The miners were betting that availability of these concs in coming months will be limited by the onset of the rainy season in the Philippines.
However, many domestic NPI smelters have not stockpiled enough nickel concs to meet their needs, which also gave overseas mines more confidence to lift their offering prices of these feeds further, Mysteel Global noted.
As of September 5, the price of Philippines-origin 1.3% nickel content concs under Mysteel's assessment came in at $42/t CIF Lianyungang port in Jiangsu, up by another $1/t from one week ago.
Total inventories of nickel concs at China's 14 major ports continued swelling to reach 10.43 million tonnes as of August 31, higher by another 296,100 tonnes or 2.9% from the previous week, according to Mysteel's latest weekly survey. Within the total, the tonnage from the Philippines had increased by 363,400 tonnes or 3.7% on week to 10.18 million tonnes during that period.
Source:Mysteel Global
