Off-season arrival, stable steel market

Recent market reports released by some well-known steel trading institutions show that due to changes in supply and demand and steel production costs, the steel market entering 2011 will likely remain relatively stable.

From the demand point of view, due to the close of the year, the demand for domestic construction steel, heat coils and other products have shown a downward trend. According to the monitoring, in the market of Shanghai-related company stocks, Baosteel Co., Ltd. 6.39 +0.020.31% of the market, the construction steel market procurement gradually weakened, the dealers also turned into a group wait-and-see status, "demand off-season" has been quietly arrived. The tumble price of Shanghai construction steel in December was less than 50 yuan.

In the domestic hot-rolled coil market, relevant inventory levels in the local markets are still at a high level, and the Shanghai market's coil inventory is estimated at 2.7 million tons. Some businesses expect that the inventory level after the Spring Festival may be close to or exceed the high point of 10 years.

At present, the only demand for maintaining high demand is that the inventory of the cold rolled coil market associated with the automotive industry has not risen significantly, and the local resource gap still exists. However, the cancellation of preferential policies for vehicle purchase tax from January 1, 2011 may affect its demand.

At the same time, from the perspective of supply, due to the completion of energy-saving and emission-reduction tasks in some regions, the resumption of production of small and medium steel mills began to increase, and the market supply increased. Statistics show that in November 2010, domestic crude steel output showed a positive growth again after a consecutive decline of 3 months from the same period last year. In November 2010, the average daily output of crude steel increased by 3.1% compared with the previous month. In mid-December, the national daily output of crude steel reached 16.77 million tons, an increase of 4.50% over the same period of last month.

However, because the prices of raw materials such as iron ore, coke, and billets for steel production are still firm, the industry expects that the possibility of a sharp drop in steel prices is also relatively small. At present, the 63.5% grade of Indian fines is quoted at 177-179 US dollars per ton. The industry estimates that the iron ore import price increase in the first quarter of this year will be around 7%. Under the circumstances that all major coal mines raise the coal price in January, coke and billet prices will also show an upward trend, supporting the rise in the cost of steel.

It is worth noting that in mid-December 2010, Baosteel Co., Ltd. (600019) has raised the ex-factory price of steel in January 2011 by 100-300 yuan/ton. In terms of hot rolling, low-carbon steel, ultra-low carbon steel, and general cold forming steel are increased by 260 yuan/ton, other varieties are raised by 100 yuan/ton; pickling products are generally raised by 200 yuan/ton; in cold rolled products, CQ grade Non-automotive steel grades were increased by RMB 200/tonne, other products were increased by RMB 300/tonne; stainless steel products and Meishan steel products were preferentially priced at RMB 100/tonne and RMB 200/ton on the basis of direct plant prices; thick plates were generally raised. 150 yuan/ton. The industry believes that Baosteel's price increase has consideration of the cost of coverage, and it also shows that Baosteel has more confidence in the market demand in 2011.