Prices in Southeast Asia's steel billet market declined during the week to Friday February 21 because of low-priced Japanese billet transactions and competitive offers for Chinese billet.
But market sentiment turned positive towards the end of the week, with sources saying that prices are likely to have bottomed out for now.
Fastmarkets' daily price assessment for
steel billet, import, cfr Southeast Asia, which mainly looks at 120-150mm 5sp grade billet sold into Manila, was $412 per tonne on February 21, unchanged from the previous day but down by $10-11 per tonne from $422-423 per tonne on February 14.
On Wednesday, 20,000 tonnes of 5sp Japanese billet was booked by a buyer in the Philippines at $412 per tonne cfr Manila.
A second buyer in the Philippines also booked 6,000 tonnes of 6 meter length Japanese billet at $410-415 per tonne cfr during the week. This transaction did not meet the specifications listed in Fastmarkets' methodology and was excluded from the price assessment.
The increased volume of Japanese billet exports is likely to be a one-off...