Posted on 16 Jan 2024
As of January 14, the price of Q235 150mm square billet in Tangshan in North China's Hebei province, the country's largest steel production hub, had declined further by Yuan 80/tonne ($11.2/t) from January 7 to Yuan 3,570/t EXW and including the 13% VAT, in sync with the softening of Chinese ferrous futures prices last week, according to Mysteel's weekly survey.
Accordingly, the average loss on billet sales suffered by the ten integrated mills in Tangshan under Mysteel's tracking deepened by Yuan 67/t to Yuan 327/t as of January 12, while the average cost of producing the semis fell by Yuan 33/t on week to Yuan 3,927/t including the 13% VAT, according to Mysteel's data.
Meanwhile, Mysteel's survey showed that over January 5-11, daily billet production among the 30 steel mills in the city Mysteel follows averaged 44,600 tonnes/day, down 3,800 t/d from the previous week and making for a two-week decline. Some mills had switched to producing finished steel products during the survey period and several blast furnaces had been idled for overhauls as well, survey respondents said.
On the other hand, billet demand from local re-rollers improved slightly with the lifting of production curbs previously imposed on them. The daily consumption of semis among the 55 local re-rollers sampled by Mysteel reversed up by 15,400 t/d on week to average 39,800 t/d over January 4-10.
"Although most re-rollers had resumed operations, they were not active in ramping up output, and the pace at which they procured billet was still slow," according to a survey respondent.
Consequently, billet inventories among the surveyed re-rollers decreased by 2,200 t/d on week to 364,600 tonnes as of January 10.
In contrast, stocks of the semis held among retail warehouses accumulated for the second week last week, with the volume at the four commercial warehouses and two ports in Tangshan that Mysteel checks growing by another 61,300 t/d on week to 1.35 million tonnes as of January 11 – the highest since late March last year.
Source:Mysteel Global
