Price Adjustments for Steel Products (Domestic) for June, 2015

2015-04-17

On Apr 17th, 2015, Taiwan’s China Steel Corporation (CSC) held the domestic pricing meeting for June 2015 delivery, and announced the following statement: On global economic perspective, US industrial production, export momentum, and consumer confidence have slowed down, as a result of low oil price, strong U.S. dollar and extremely cold weather. FED might put off the interest rate hike. Since ECB implemented QE policy and the crisis of Greece relieved, Eurozone economy is anticipated to recover gradually. In China, import and export both shrank in March and the first quarter GDP grew by mere 7%, the lowest since global financial crisis. Besides easing property restrictions and cutting interest rate, Chinese government is expected to adopt more stimulus policies to spur economy. According to IMF latest report, driven by the moderate growth in Europe, India and Japan, global economic outlook remains optimistic for the next two years. However, financial fluctuations and geopolitical issues remain, governments need to be more aggressive to avoid stagnation and deflation risk.
Lower than expected global economic growth led to weak steel demand. World Steel Association forecasts that global steel consumption will only increase 0.5% in 2015. Sluggish domestic demand forced mills to export excess output. Furthermore, declining raw material price makes market more conservative, and a wait-and-see attitude is adopted. As US steel price drop further, mills cut production to lower inventories and wait for demand to be recovered. Flat European demand and low-priced Russian imports caused domestic steel market to remain bleak. Chinese steel market had once rebounded in March due to warmer weather, higher operation rate, and increasing environmental cost. However, as economic fundamentals hadn’t been effectively improved, market transactions shrink consequently.
Downstream steel industries in Taiwan was affected by uncertainties like slowing global growth and plunging international steel price, thus export orders and prices softened. With a great amount of low-priced imports still pouring in from China and South Korea, CSC has decided to lower overall steel prices by an average of 7.4% , or NT$1,285 for June sales for the purpose of enhancing the competitiveness of downstream customers. Details are listed below:
Adjustments (NT$ /MT)
Plates    - 1045
Bars and Rods    - 1090
HRC    - 1500
CRC    - 1499
EG    - 1200
ES    - 700
GI    - 1200

Information Origin : http://www.csc.com.tw/CS/CSC_E/NC/neli/neli.aspx

Back