Market players have said that the recent Wire+Tube trade fair in Düsseldorf provided mixed sentiment on pricing trends, to the disappointment of some.
“There was a lot of chatter around the fair of price hike announcements and whatnot, but effectively I heard nothing concrete, actually,” a Ruhr-based buyer of coil tells Kallanish.
For him, the two-hour journey may not have been worthwhile. “Some colleagues who went there for decades have said they might not come again,” he notes.
Another German buyer highlights that one mill group had lowered its coil prices to collect orders in the week prior to the fair (see separate article). This appears to have slowed upward momentum.
Offer values of €730/tonne ($855) and above for hot-rolled coil had been heard prior to the fair and reiterated at the event, but not confirmed by the mills.
Latest offers are now in the €700-730 range, after the temporary downward dip below €700.
Against that, makers of tubes have been more outspoken and concrete with their announcements of pushing up prices by €50. According to buyers, that move was expected as it was overdue.
The development of tubes prices was seen lagging far behind the hikes achieved for coil in recent months. “While coil took leaps, tubes went up in drips at best, by maybe €5 per week,” one source says.
Separately from the trade fair, one mill group informed those who seeking quotes that its next offers would be €50 higher, mostly for products like sections and merchant bar, which it did not feature at the fair.
Elsewhere, a large buyer for construction tells Kallanish that one producer now aims for a base price of €480/t for straight rebar. Well above the €430 targeted by most northwestern European rebar mills. According to the buyer, that offer is an outlier, and not really echoed by the wider market.
