The market of long products for more than six months can not get out of the prolonged depression. The demand for steel products used in construction remains limited, and hopes the situation will improve in the foreseeable future virtually no. Prices of finished steel and semi-finished products oscillate in a relatively narrow interval, but at a very low level.
In the first half of April, the direction of these oscillations was clearly downward. Since the beginning of the month, the cost of blanks the production of the CIS has decreased by at least $15 per ton If April's products are sold mainly at $525-535 per ton FOB, then at the conclusion of the may contracts, producers had to omit the quotes to $510-520 / t FOB, and some deals, in particular, with the Belarusian blanks, was based less than $510 per ton FOB.
The main buyer of billets from the CIS in the last few weeks have been a Turkey. Some of the local rolling mills bought semi-finished products as a replacement for relatively expensive metal. This is compensated for manufacturers of weak demand in other areas. Egyptian companies possess only minimal volumes of blanks, because in the country there is an acute shortage of currency. In addition, traders put forward counter-proposals on the prices of $5-10 per ton lower than the current market level. In Saudi Arabia, the demand for long products remains high, but local distributors have bought quite a large amount of semi-finished products in March, and now took a break, hoping that the delay in a falling market will bring them benefits.
Closer to the middle of April the weakness, however, began to be in the Turkish market products. First, in Turkey, as in other countries of the region, this year did not happen the traditional spring upturn in the construction industry. The demand for structural steel remains very limited and the prices have gone down. Accordingly, domestic prices for billet dropped to $540-550 per ton EXW, and orders for imported products coming from the Turkish companies at a level not higher than $520-525 per ton FOB, i.e. $5-10 per ton less than until I can offer Russian and Ukrainian suppliers.
Second, closer to the middle of April, the company exporting scrap metal to Turkey, has made concessions. Trade in those raw materials has resumed, which may lead to a decline in demand for semi-finished products in the country. Finally, in the third has declined in recent years, and export prices for Turkish billet. Their value fell to $535-545 / t FOB, and, for transactions suppliers have to seek customers farther from home – for example, in Bangladesh or Latin America.
It should be noted that the global market in recent times there is an excess supply of blanks. Ukrainian companies in the first quarter exported more than 1.5 million tons of this production, exceeding the same period of the previous year by 8%. Their Russian colleagues for the same three month sold abroad is about 1.2 million tons of billets, cutting off last year's result by 4%. Turkish steelmakers for January-February has exported more than 460 thousand tons of billets, 23.7% more than a year ago. As a result, now many buyers have sufficient inventory of work in process and not strive for new purchases.
In the countries of South-East Asia the demand and price of billet went down at the end of March, when the region fell sharply Japanese scrap. However, some of the Japanese company in early April was ready to sell semi-finished products by $540-550 per ton CFR, taking advantage of the depreciation of the yen against the dollar.
Now the lower level of the price of Japanese products in the region is approximately $550 per ton CFR, the same as the Russian, which is offered at $550-560 / t CFR. Vietnamese companies in recent years, almost stopped exporting semi-finished products, preferring to use these products in the country, and Malaysian and Taiwanese steelmakers are out of the market due to very high cost its products. Some Korean company for the same reason suspended export operations, others have been forced to accept lower quotations for their products to $560-565 / t CFR.
As the supply of workpieces in Asia is now somewhat limited, the prices ceased to fall. However, the low demand of finished products and low cost of scrap metal, it will block new attempts to improve in the foreseeable future.
 
Victor Tarnavsky
Rusmet.ru