EUROMETAL brought together steel experts in Zurich to discuss decarbonization and distribution
EUROMETAL together with the Swiss federations SSHV and VSEMH organized a Steel Day in Zurich.
This event, attended by 45 steel experts, addressed decarbonization and distribution challenges. The permanent interaction and dialogue throughout the conference demonstrated the need and importance of these events.
The conference featured speakers such as Diana Gutjahr from metal.suisse and Ernst Fischer AG, Guido Kerkhoff from Klöckner & Co, Gregorio Bani from SIPRO Steel Solutions, Matthew Watkins and Aaron Kearney-Keaveny from CRU, Julia Bolotova from Fastmarkets and Marco Micciché from Eusider Trading.
The day before, participants were invited to take part in a visit from the company Hans Kohler AG, a leading stainless steel trading company in Switzerland. It primarily sells semi-finished products such as pipes, sheets and steel bars as well as pipe connections, screws and fasteners made of corrosion-resistant stainless steel.
This event was sponsored by Swiss Steel Group with the support of metal.suisse, the Swiss Center for Steel Construction (SZS), the company Hans Kohler AG and the Austrian federation ARGE Stahl- und Metalldistribution.
Green steel transition in focus: Key takeaways from EUROMETAL Steel Day in Zurich
EUROMETAL Steel Day Zurich
Hans Kohler AG visit
British Steel bags Turkey rail contract
British Steel has won a multi-million-pound contract to supply rail to Turkey. It will deliver tens of thousands of tonnes of track for a new high-speed electric railway connecting Mersin with the cities of Adana, Osmaniye and Gaziantep.
It will help create a lower-emission transport link between Turkey’s second-largest container port and inland cities more than 150 miles away, with the project expected to reduce CO2 emissions by more than 150,000 tonnes/year, the steelmaker says.
UK Export Finance (UKEF), the UK government’s export credit agency, has underwritten €781 million ($847m) of financing to support construction of the 286km railway.
“This is the start of what we expect to be a new unique partnership between British Steel, UKEF and international contractors,” British Steel commercial director – rail Craig Harvey says in a note sent to Kallanish. “The ability to combine world-leading quality rail with a world-leading finance solution for supply into global markets and networks is an unparalleled supply chain solution. Looking forward, we are very excited about what this will achieve.”
The first shipments of rail will be transported from British Steel to Turkey in the second quarter. It is manufactured in Scunthorpe and is 60E1 in grade R260, each at 36 metres in length.
Adam Smith Poland
German rebar benders struggle in brutally competitive market
The standstill in the German house-building market has distributors and benders of rebar battling for orders in a brutally competitive environment.
“Benders can hardly sell for a higher price than they paid to the mills,” a manager at a large distribution group tells Kallanish. He explains that companies the size of his need a margin of €150/tonne ($163). This includes obvious services like cutting and bending, and delivering, costs like transport and handling, but also for the scrap waste from cutting, which means lost value. “After all, I get less money per tonne from the scrap yard than I paid to the mill.”
Another buyer echoes the former manager’s complaints, but also indirectly blames him for making a bad game worse. According to that buyer, the big bender groups have recently come one step down, chasing for business that usually belongs to the smaller players.
“We are, ourselves, one of the bigger small players, but our upper limit for a job is 2,000 tonnes, and that’s where the big ones normally start,” he notes. Smaller local benders have a monthly tonnage of 700t, he explains, and very clearly accuses the big benders of ruining prices, as they have the financial cushions to help them survive.
Base prices for rebar have occasionally dropped below €370/t – or €635/t delivered – which brings mills to their pain threshold. However, the price deterioration downstream is worse. “Even if mills’ prices were €50 lower, we would still not break even,” the buyer complains.
For one month, his company tried to charge the price it would need to get away with minimal damage, and communicated this to its customers. “But it did not work; they would not place orders,” he concludes.
Christian Koehl Germany
Polish steel rebar prices inch up on improved demand from construction sector
Polish mills offered rebar this week at 2,700 zloty ($689) per tonne CPT, Fastmarkets understands. This was the price that most local mills have been targeting since the end of April.
Sources told Fastmarkets that, for bigger volumes, small discounts of 20-30 zloty per tonne were possible. But for a few hundred tonnes, mills would keep the price at 2,700 zloty per tonne CPT.
Consequently, market participants estimated the tradeable market price in the range of 2,670-2,700 zloty per tonne CPT.
Based on the current offers and market sources’ estimations, Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel reinforcing bar (rebar), domestic, cpt Poland, was 2,670-2,700 zloty per tonne on Friday, up by 20 zloty per tonne from 2,650-2,680 zloty per tonne on May 10.
In the secondary market, lower prices were heard, in the range of 2,650-2,670 zloty per tonne CPT and even at 2,600 zloty per tonne CPT.
“In April, Polish mills produced rebar at lower prices, and now this cheap material is in the secondary market,” a distributor source told Fastmarkets.
The same source added that the mills had sold good volumes at last month’s lower prices, and now they could keep prices comparatively high.
A second distributor source told Fastmarkets that the price increase on Polish rebar was supported by the slight improvement in demand from the construction sector, the main consumer of long steel products.
“I think the residential construction subsector is keeping rebar prices up,” the source said, adding that some delayed residential projects had moved forward in the second quarter of the year.
The residential construction subsector in Poland will be also supported by the continuation of the government’s program granting low-interest rate loans to first-time home buyers. The details of the new program have yet to be finalized, so its effects will only be seen in the third and the fourth quarters of the year, according to the second distributor source.
The source added that there were still only a few significant infrastructure projects, and any improvement in this field was expected only at the end of the year.
In any case, the Polish zloty remained comparatively strong, making rebar import offers more attractive to the local market.
On May 17, €1 was trading for 4.26 Polish zloty. In comparison, one month before, €1 was trading for 4.34 Polish zloty. And on May 17, 2023, €1 was trading for 4.49 zloty.
It was rumored that a sizeable cargo of rebar was booked from Germany to Poland at €610 ($663) per tonne CPT. The rumored price was €16-19 per tonne lower compared with the price buyers could eventually achieve from Polish mills for large volumes.
This information was not confirmed by the market, however.
Published by: Darina Kahramanova
