Import prices for steel slab in Southeast Asia and East Asia were slightly lower over the week to July 1, although market participants were optimistic that prices were bottoming out amid a recovery in the Chinese flat steel markets and rising raw material costs.
Downstream flat steel producers are likely to follow their Chinese counterparts in increasing prices amid the rebound in the Chinese steel markets after production cuts were implemented in northeast China's steelmaking hub of Tangshan, a trader in Taiwan said.Fastmarkets' daily HRC index fob China stood at $503.15 per tonne on June 28, up by $17.57 per tonne from a week earlier. "Producers are unlikely to accept...