Day: 14 April 2020

The Italian prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has extended the country’s lockdown until 3 May. The steel sector is gradually resuming shipping, sales activity and production as companies are being authorised to work with the necessary hygienic precautions specified by regional authorities, Kallanish learns from market participants.

Most wire rod, beam, merchant bar and rebar producers will be open this week and will be producing and shipping last month’s orders. Distributors will also be open to ship and receive material. Sales activity however is practically non-existent and there are no new prices for long products as mills are quoting pre-lockdown March prices. Despite the restart, sales are not seen resuming this week. Purchasing groups have seen their own sales collapse and have had no turnover, while the companies which are part of the purchasing groups are dealing with liquidity issues, Kallanish hears.

Merchant bar remains at €50-60/tonne ($54.7-65.6/t) base ex-works on average, or €75/t delivered. Including an average €420/t for size extras, transaction prices for domestic material remain at €470-480/t ex-works. Rebar prices are at €400-410/t ex-works while the first category of beams is at €550/t ex-works including €380-385/t size extras, sources say.

This month, mills are buying scrap at €20-25/t less than in March, Kallanish notes.

The Spanish steel sector will have a clearer picture of the impact of Covid-19 on its activity in May. This view was expressed to Spanish media by Andres Barceló, general director of the Spanish steelmakers’ association Unesid, in an interview monitored by Kallanish.

“The industry has seen both its production and raw material supplies affected,” says Barceló. “Most large steel companies in the country have had to face higher costs while output and exports have been halted for a period of nearly two weeks. The impact of these factors will be able to be evaluated with more clarity next month. It is now difficult to carry out such an assessment. The most important thing is, and continues to be, overcoming the health crisis. Once it is over, we will start with our analysis,” the Unesid president adds.

Spanish steel companies are determined to comply with all health and security measures implemented during the current epidemic. The sector has returned to work under very high security conditions throughout the supply chain, Barceló confirms.

Italian car output dipped again year-on-year in February. This also follows a fall in December and January, says local carmakers’ association Associazione Nazionale Filiera Industria Automobilistica (Anfia) in a report monitored by Kallanish.

According to Anfia data, passenger car production in Italy fell in February by -3% year-on-year and by -5% in the first two months of the year. In January passenger car production in Italy was 32,062 units and in February it was 52,204 units.

According to ISTAT (Instituto Nazionale di Statistica) data, total automotive production including heavy and industrial transport fell by -1% in February compared to February 2019. This is the 20th consecutive monthly fall. In January and February, the fall was -1.5% year-on-year.

Italian car output had dipped on-year in 2019. Total automotive production including heavy and industrial transport fell by -9.6% last year.