Billet prices in the major global markets continued to soften over the week ended Friday April 12 due to the lack of demand and the continuing falls in the price of scrap, notably in Turkey.
The exception to this was the Chinese market, where active demand from re-rolling mills resulted in reduced billet inventories, pushing prices upward.The spot inventory was 577,000 tonnes on Thursday in Tangshan, down by 143,000 tonnes from a week earlier, a billet trader in Tangshan said, quoting a local industry information provider.The Chinese domestic billet price was 3,550 yuan ($528) per tonne on Friday, up by 90 yuan per tonne from April 4.China's billet export offers would be $475-480 per tonne fob based on domestic prices, if any customers asked, an export trader in east China said. But this price was not considered workable for any export market.AsiaMeanwhile, prices in Southeast Asia's steel billet market slipped by $5 per tonne week on week, to $470-475 per tonne cfr on April 12.Trading activity in the region picked up with softer scrap prices failing to damp Filipino buyers' interest in securing billet that...