Formosa Ha Tinh, a large Vietnamese steel mill, on Friday cut the price of its SAE1006 hot coil for delivery in December to $590 per tonne CFR Vietnam home. Although down about $20 a ton from November delivery, prices are still high in Asia.

 At present, the export price of mainstream SS400 hot volume from steel mills in North China is $555 / ton FOB, and the sea freight to Southeast Asia is about $15 / ton. Therefore, the comprehensive cost has a certain price advantage compared with local resources in Vietnam. In addition, last week, India’s large steel mills also cut the export price of hot coil to $560- $570 / ton FOB, some resource prices are negotiable. The main reason is that domestic steel demand is weak and steel mills are not keen to cut production, hoping to increase exports to offset the shortfall in domestic demand. A large leading South Korean steel mill also said its downstream manufacturing and large traders have high inventories of sheet metal for at least two months, so it will consider cutting prices to increase the allocation of sheet metal export orders. At present, South Korean steel mills generally offer US $580 / ton CFR for the export of hot volume for the shipping date in December to Southeast Asia, with no obvious price advantage.

 Due to the recent weakening of Chinese steel prices, overseas steel mills lack confidence in the future market, some businesses believe that China’s steel demand may be improved at the end of October, but more importantly, production is difficult to have a big drop, overseas steel prices are likely to fall further