India: JSW Steel Hike Gas based DRI Prices by INR 750/MT (USD 11)

JSW Steel, India's largest private steel producer has increased its gas based DRI (sponge iron) offers by around INR 750/MT (USD 11) for Sep'19 deliveries, SteelMint learned from trade participants.

The current offers for FeM 80-82 DRI are reported at INR 18,250/MT (USD 254), which was at INR 17,500/MT (USD 243) in Aug'19. The material is produced and offered from its Dolvi, Maharashtra based plant, ex-works.

According to sources, rising sponge prices along with stability in raw material & substitutes (scrap & pig iron) has influenced producer to keep prices strong.

SteelMint also learned that, JSW Steel's DRI selling in merchant market has increased, since quite some time, hence the mill can take bulk orders too, which was quite low since few months ago.

The company has annual DRI (Sponge iron) production capacity of 1.6 MnT in it's Dolvi plant. JSW Steel Dolvi is expanding it's steel capacity from 5 MnT pa to 10 MnT pa.

According to the participants, trades are taking place for the neighbouring markets i.e. Mumbai(Wada), Jalna & Nashik, in which freight cost from JSW's dolvi plant is near to INR 1,000/MT.

Current offers for sponge C-DRI 80 FeM are hovering at INR 16,800-17,000/MT ex-Bellary - South India and INR 16,800-17,000/MT ex-Rourkela - East India. The freight cost for Jalna from Bellary is about INR 1,500/MT from Rourkela at INR 1,900-2,000/MT.

-- Central India based JSW's Monnet Ispat has offered DR CLO grade sponge (FeM 82) at INR 18,500/MT ex-Raipur. However as per officials, trade activities are weak.

JSW Steel Dolvi Procures Iron Ore Fines from Karnataka Auctions

JSW (Dolvi) bought 56,000 MT fines (Fe 64%) at INR 2,725/MT from Veerabhadrappa Sangappa & Company. As per SteelMint data, this is for the first time that company procured fines from Karnataka e-auctions for its Dolvi plant.

Meanwhile in comparison to overall sourcing of JSW Steel it has decreased sharply from Karnataka e-auctions by 14% to 1.29 MnT in Aug'19 compared to 1.49 MnT in Jul'19. Out of 1.29 MnT iron ore sourced by JSW, Vedanta supplied 0.52 MnT increased sharply by more than three-times against 0.16 MnT last month and thus contributed around 41% of total JSW sourcing.