Northwest Europe CRC, HDG prices rise on demand recovery

Prices for both domestic and imported cold-rolled and hot-dipped galvanized coil have moved up in the week to Feb. 8 in Northwest Europe supported by some demand recovery and full order books of mills.

Platts assessed domestic prices for cold-rolled coil in Northwest Europe up Eur20/mt on day and Eur5/mt on week to Eur860/mt ex-works Ruhr of Feb. 8. The assessment was based on tradable values reported at Eur830-900/mt ex-works Ruhr.

Platts assessed import cold-rolled coil in Northwest Europe at Eur835/mt CIF Antwerp, up by Eur10/mt on day.

Offers of CRC from Asia have been reported at Eur830-860/mt CIF Antwerp.

Some big steelmakers have been focused on trading of HDG, using more CRC as feedstock. This resulted in lower availability of CRC and showed some support to the prices.

“Some Germany mills are not offering CRC at all, they focus on HDG sales and claim that they have good order books,” a German service center said. “Generally, there is less CRC in the market now.”

“I think we finally see some recovery of CRC, this had been the worst traded coil product, so there is a chance that it will finally see some recovery,” a Northwest European distributor said.

European mills have fully booked first quarter rolling downstream coil and some claim that they were also sold out of April and in some cases May production material.

In addition, several sources reported demand increase from automotive industry.

Despite positive sentiment, buyers have been focused on purchases of smaller lots of material as they remain uncertain in current trend sustainability.

“Customers do not know what will happen in the market, so they buy what the need on aa day-to-day basis, but this is actually good – we have stable demand,” a steelmaker said.

The assessment for domestic hot-dipped galvanized coil in the region also moved up by Eur10/mt on week to Eur900/mt ex-works Ruhr on Feb. 8.

Tradable values have been estimated by market sources at Eur860-930/mt ex-works Ruhr.

Platts is part of S&P Global Commodity Insights.

— Maria Tanatar