WEEKLY: China’s steel stocks dip 2nd week, sales up
Mysteel’s latest weekly survey showed that finished steel inventories at the trading houses in 35 Chinese major cities fell for the second consecutive week by another 3.8% on week to 17.8 million tonnes as of March 13, and the declining rate was also 2.9 percentage points higher than the previous week.
The finished steel inventories at the surveyed 184 steelmakers nationwide declined for the third week to 5.7 million tonnes, and the 7.7% week-on-week decline was also 2 percentage points higher than last week, according to Mysteel’s latest release.
Market sources agreed that demand has shown signs of steady improvement.
“South and East China have finally got rid of rains and downstream demand for steel has been steadily reviving, while steel output particularly in North China such as Tangshan has been affected by emergency restrictions on steel mills for air pollution control,” a market source from Northwest China’s Shaanxi province said.
He estimated, though, that the decline in finished steel production may be more obvious in flat than long as China’s finished steel proportion between the two are 60:40.
The daily molten iron output at 247 steel mills dipped for the third week by another 10,500 tonnes/day on week to 2.14 million t/d on average over March 8-14, Mysteel’s data showed.
As for demand, “most consumers are operating in a hand-to-mouth mode, but the near-term demand outlook remains firm as Chinese steel consumption usually picks up in March and April, and so are the market has been performing within expectation,” the market source added.
Over March 7-13, spot transaction of construction steel comprising rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 Chinese traders across the country soared 15.8% or 27,757 t/d on week to an average of 203,151 t/d, which was back to a normal daily level, according to Mysteel’s data.
Better sales and less output saw Mysteel’s national average price for HRB400 20mm dia rebar persist at above the threshold of Yuan 4,000/tonne ($595/t), up another Yuan 26/t on week to Yuan 4,053/t including the 16% VAT as of March 14.
Written by Anna Wu, wub@mysteel.com
Edited by Hongmei Li, li.hongmei@mysteel.com
Table 1 Five major steel products inventories at traders Unit: ‘000 tonnes
Product |
Mar 15 2019 |
WoW (%) |
Feb 15 2019 |
MoM (%) |
Mar 16 2018 |
YoY (%) |
Rebar |
9,731.4 |
-3.8% |
8,276.9 |
17.6% |
10,368.8 |
-6.1% |
Wire rod |
2,982.0 |
-5.8% |
2,787.2 |
7.0% |
3,332.6 |
-10.5% |
HR sheet |
2,653.5 |
-2.2% |
2,600.7 |
2.0% |
2,710.1 |
-2.1% |
CR sheet |
1,189.1 |
-1.2% |
1,213.4 |
-2.0% |
1,225.3 |
-3.0% |
Medium plate |
1,263.1 |
-4.5% |
1,320.9 |
-4.4% |
1,154.2 |
9.4% |
Total |
17,819.1 |
-3.8% |
16,199.1 |
10.0% |
18,791.0 |
-5.2% |
Table 2 Five major steel products inventories at mills Unit: ‘000 tonnes
Product |
Mar 15 2019 |
WoW (%) |
Feb 15 2019 |
MoM (%) |
Mar 16 2018 |
YoY (%) |
Rebar |
2,754.0 |
-12.7% |
3,395.2 |
-18.9% |
3,527.8 |
-21.9% |
Wire rod |
852.4 |
-8.5% |
1,132.6 |
-24.7% |
1,024.2 |
-16.8% |
HR sheet |
997.4 |
4.6% |
990.9 |
0.7% |
1,064.1 |
-6.3% |
CR sheet |
317.6 |
-3.3% |
371.7 |
-14.6% |
507.3 |
-37.4% |
Medium plate |
759.0 |
-3.2% |
799.3 |
-5.0% |
811.1 |
-6.4% |
Total |
5,680.4 |
-7.7% |
6,689.7 |
-15.1% |
6,934.5 |
-18.1% |
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