South Korea seems to be acquiring the centre stage with China as lead exporter in South East Asia.
Domestic demand in South Korea remains slothful and some of mills having ramped up their capacity in the recent past have added to export compulsions of these mills to keep the bottom lines intact.
Notably Hyundai Steel added 2 Blast Furnace in 2010 and well into installing another in 2011 their overall capacity zooming up.
At the same time falling steel prices and poor demand from the construction segment has commenced squeezing the profit margins of steel mills.
Nearly 10% drop in Korean Won in the last Quarter has made the mills more export worthy at the same time enhancing the foreign currency debts and import costs of raw materials such as iron ore and coal.
Contemporarily Korean mills are running neck to neck with their Chinese counterparts in grabbing the export volumes. Moreover the quality edge and the wider size range definitely provide the extra glint to the Korean offers over the Chinese.
It is learn that recently 40 tonnes to 50000 tonnes of HRC have been booked by into India by POSCO at very competitive prices.
With the Indian in cloud seven with domestic levels much above the import bookings it is likely to play a game spoiler in the coming months.
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