India: High Base Price Limits Participation in SAIL's Defective Billet Auction

Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) conducted an auction from its central India based Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) for defective steel products on 17 Mar'20.

Highlights of the auction are as follows:

o Billet -Nearly 3,109 MT defective billets (upto 110) was put up for auction and company started the auction at base price of INR 29,500/MT EXW Bhilai but due to higher base price no response was received from the bidders. In the previous auction conducted on 07 Mar'20 only single lot 451.9 MT billet was booked at base price INR 29,450/MT.

SteelMint's price assessment for Raipur billet has come down by INR 1,700/MT W-o-W to INR 26,500/MT ex-Raipur. Price has fallen due to limited trades and dull finished steel demand.

o Bloom - Nearly 1,798 MT Bloom-CC was put up for auction in recently out of which 1,021 MT booked at base price INR 25,050/MT EXW Bhilai.

Total 778 MT Bloom RL also offered but none of them fetched bids.

As per SteelMint analysis this auction also attracted participation from only those buyers who were in need of immediate stock to run their plants.

In this auction, total quantity of 32,208 MT defective steel was put up for auction, out of which 1,498.7 (4.65% share) material was sold and remaining 30,710 MT remained unsold.

To view complete details of auction please click here- BSP Auction Summary dtd 17-03-2020