India: 100% Quantity Booked in SAIL Pig Iron Auction

Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) - a govt. owned steel producer conducted auction for around 7,400 MT steel grade pig iron today from its Rourkela Steel plant (eastern India). The auction received overwhelming response as entire quantity offered was booked.

As per sources, in today's auction the company had kept base price similar to last auction at INR 23,050/MT (USD 324), while the material was booked upto INR 100/MT over the base price. The bids fetched were in the range of INR 23,050-23,150/MT; ex-plant, Rourkela.

Participants believe that, the key factor behind better response in RSP's auction is short supply from few private producers in local market on account of some issue on billing system (GST), thus the local buyer's turned active in RSP auction & booked material.

The current prices of steel grade pig iron in neighboring states are hovering at INR 22,700-22,900/MT ex-Jajpur (Odisha), INR 23,600-24,000/MT ex-Durgapur, INR 23,300-23,500/MT ex-Bokaro (Jharkhand), INR 24,100-24,300/MT FoR Raigarh & INR 24,300-24,400/MT FoR Raipur; excluding of GST.

SAIL is one of India's major steel producer in terms of capacity with an annual installed capacity of about 21 MnT followed by JSW Steel at 19.5 MnT (after recent acquisition of Monnet Ispat).