Spanish stainless steelmaker Acerinox has appointed Mark Davis chief executive officer of its Bahru Stainless joint venture in Malaysia, it said on Monday July 1.Davis replaces Oswald Wolfe, who becomes director of institutional relations at Acerinox's headquarters in Madrid, Spain. Wolfe had been CEO of...Read More
Despite China's ban of low-quality copper scrap imports since the beginning of 2019, the volume of copper units contained in scrap imports has defied expectations by rising in the first five months of this year. Between January and May this year, China imported 682,508 gross tonnes of copper scrap, according to customs data. All of the imports are of the higher-grade category 6 scrap. This is down...Read More
Nickel market participants cite technical squeezes as the root cause of a 9% increase in nickel prices over June, with Shanghai and London exchange contracts targeted amid slack supply and demand.The LME three-month nickel price peaked at $12,850 per tonne on the morning of Monday July 1, its highest since April and an increase of more than 9% from a low of $11,605 per tonne on June 7.Despite a 2....Read More
Nickel's three-month price on the London Metal Exchange was lower at the close of trading on Monday July 1, failing to sustain recent gains while poor data from China's manufacturing sector damped buying sentiment.Three-month nickel futures closed at $12,350 per tonne during the afternoon, down by a little less than 3% from an intraday high of $12,850 per tonne, its highest level since April.Marke...Read More
Nickel market participants cite technical squeezes as the root cause of a 9% increase in nickel prices over June, with Shanghai and London exchange contracts targeted amid slack supply and demand.The LME three-month nickel price peaked at $12,850 per tonne on the morning of Monday July 1, its highest since April and an increase of more than 9% from a low of $11,605 per tonne on June 7.Despite a 2....Read More
Pessimism grew in the seaborne coking coal market on Monday July 1, with transactions and offers declining further.A shipment of premium low-vol hard coking coal, scheduled for loading over July 4-14, was sold to an end user in northern China over the weekend at $192.94 per tonne cfr China, according to various sources.This is down around $4 per tonne compared with a transaction last Friday involv...Read More
Nickel market participants cite technical squeezes as the root cause of a 9% increase in nickel prices over June, with Shanghai and London exchange contracts targeted amid slack supply and demand.The LME three-month nickel price peaked at $12,850 per tonne on the morning of Monday July 1, its highest since April and an increase of more than 9% from a low of $11,605 per tonne on June 7.Despite a 2....Read More
Turkish steel producers continued to book more deep-sea scrap cargoes for August shipments, with prices rising further, sources said on Monday July 1.A steel mill in the Marmara region booked a Baltic Sea cargo, comprising 20,000 tonnes of HMS 1&2 (80:20) at $293 per tonne and 20,000 tonnes of bonus at $303 per tonne cfr, late on June 28.The same mill also booked a European cargo on Friday, compri...Read More
Here are five Fastmarkets MB stories you might have missed on Monday July 1 that are worth another look.Nickel's three-month price on the London Metal Exchange fell at the close of trading on Monday July 1, failing to sustain recent gains while poor data from China's manufacturing sector damped buying sentiment.Vanadium producer Largo Resources "has adopted the conservative strategy" of...Read More
Copper stocks in Shanghai-bonded warehouses in June were at their lowest since late in January because of better import opportunities in China in May and June, while China's less refined copper imports in the second quarter dropped after a top importer had less credit issued to it.Nickel stocks in the Shanghai-bonded zone dropped in June due to an abrupt opening of the import arbitrage window, whi...Read More
Fastmarkets is standardizing the names of some of its base metals price assessments principally to identify whether they are premiums or all-in prices.Although Fastmarkets is specifying in the description of each affected price, this is not new information - the methodology for the discovery of those prices is unchanged. We will, however, update our price methodology documents to reflect the stand...Read More
The outcome of the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Japan that was held on June 28-29, saw the United States and China agree to resume trade talks, which has boosted optimism for a trade deal. This has given most non-haven markets a lift, this despite further weakness in manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) data.China's Caixin manufacturing PMI dropped to 49.4 from 50.2, Japan's manufacturing...Read More
Nickel's three-month price on the London Metal Exchange remained elevated during morning trading on Monday July 1, but fell by 2% across European trading hours despite continued outflows. The metal's futures price reached an intra-morning high of $12,850 per tonne, its highest level since April. Trading volumes were strong over the morning session, with more than 5,000 lots of nickel exchange...Read More
Plate prices in the United States have continued to fall due to supply and demand concerns, market participants said. Fastmarkets AMM's price assessment for domestic cut-to-length plate was at $37.50 per hundredweight ($750 per short ton) on Friday June 28, down by 2.6% from $38.50 per cwt a week earlier.Product was said readily available at mills, with lead times averaging two to three weeks. But...Read More
Merchant bar quality (MBQ) steel prices in the United States' domestic market have dropped once again after mill cuts in mid-June, and market sentiment remains mostly bearish with some sources anticipating further reductions. Nucor Corp, Bayou Steel Group and Gerdau Long Steel North America announced price reductions of $40 per short ton ($2 per hundredweight) effective Thursday June 13. ...Read More
ArcelorMittal has begun the revamp of a blast furnace in Brazil earlier than planned, and has also temporarily stopped operations at a rebar facility in the country due to market conditions.On June 23, the company started a 70-day maintenance outage at its No2 blast furnace in Tubar??o, in the southeast Brazilian state of Esp?-rito Santo.The stoppage had been planned for August-September.The reaso...Read More
Trineck?(C) ? 3/4 elez??rny shrugged off "the difficult situation on the steel market" to exceed expectation in its full-year results, it said last week, but the Czech Republic steelmaker warned of stronger headwinds this year.It reported a profit of 3.33 billion Czech krone ($148.77 million) after tax for 2018, while revenues from the sale of products, services and goods of 40.496 billion krone w...Read More
Export prices for rebar and wire rod from the Commonwealth of Independent States fell in the week to Monday July 1, amid lower customer bids and reduced mill offers following a drop in buying activity in major sales outlets.Fastmarkets weekly price assessment for CIS rebar exports was $455-465 per tonne fob Black Sea, down from $460-465 per tonne fob.Small cargoes of Ukrainian rebar...Read More
The iron ore market has been on a general uptrend so far in 2019, with prices hitting their highest levels since late April 2014. The market has been focused on the effects exerted by the supply side and especially China's restrictions on blast furnace operations, which may have the greatest influence on prices.The price spread between 65% Fe iron ore and the 62% Fe equivalent declined during June...Read More
In the process of standardizing the names of its prices, Fastmarkets has found that the unit of measurement on some of its value-in-use iron ore indices was displaying incorrectly.In the four indices listed in the table below, the unit of measure had been listed as US cents per tonne or US dollars per dry metric tonne unit (dmtu). The correct value, to which the indices have now been standardized,...Read More