It is reported that the lowered offers of Chinese steel exports have by now attracted little interest from European region. End user demands are weak and prices are stable with the possibility to weaken further before the end of October. The earlier round upturn brought little impact in the market and was believed to be generated by artificial car scrapping scheme and output reductions of the local steel mills.

Buying activity was quiet during the holiday and still hardly to see evident increase in the coming weeks. The European buyers have re stocked materials and are holding a wait and see attitude on the market trend over the next month. Meanwhile, the current Chinese domestic market also confuses them much.

The Chinese offers for HRC is now as low as EUR 360 per tonne to EUR 365 per tonne CFR, however the transactions remain very thin. The soft demand is undoubtedly the underlying factor for the soft buying activity of Chinese materials. We also understand that European service center generally sign long term contracts with domestic mills and only buy very small tonnage of materials form other countries.

In southern European, Chinese plate continues to stay in the position of uncompetitive despite Chinese exporters have lowered their prices again. Insider said the situation is likely to persist until the end of the year.

(Sourced from MySteel.net)
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