India: SAIL Pig Iron Auction Receives Improved Response After Base Price Cut

SAIL conducted auction for around 3,500 MT steel grade pig iron today from its Rourkela Steel plant (eastern India). The auction received quite good response as close to 55% material was booked.

As per sources, in today's auction the company had reduced base price by INR 1,200/MT to INR 25,400/MT (USD 371) as against last auction conducted on 5th Jul'19 for 3,800 MT pig iron in which the base price was at INR 26,600/MT; ex-plant, Rourkela.

However with the reduction in base price in today's auction the response was quite better as near to 1,900 MT (55%) material was booked, while remaining of 1,600 MT remained unsold.

The buyers for the today's material are mostly local furnaces in Rourkela who actively participated due to price competitiveness in comparison with landed cost of NINL & Mesco steels pig iron.

As per them, the landed cost of pig iron of these respected plants is close to INR 25,800-26,000/MT, while RSP's pig iron will be around INR 25,700-25,800/MT FoR (landed) Rourkela. Hence they preferred to buy material from RSP now.

Last week, NINL reduced its price by INR 1,500/MT to INR 25,000-25,400/MT ex-plant, Cuttack - Odisha.

Offers in other major markets are as follow-

-- Jindal Steel has further reduced pig iron price at INR 25,800/MT ex-Raigarh & panther shot(granulated pig iron) offers at INR 24,000-24,200/MT ex-Angul, Odisha.

-- Mesco Steels in Jajpur, Odisha has maintained offers and reported steel grade pig iron at INR 25,000/MT ex-plant.

-- Jharkhand based manufacturers didn't receiving much response at the offers of steel grade material at INR 26,000-26,500/MT ex-plant.

-- Officials from Neo Metaliks in Durgapur reported weak response at the offers of steel grade pig iron at INR 26,200-26,400/MT ex-plant.

-- TATA Metaliks, known as one of the largest foundry grade pig iron manufacturer has cuts price for low silicon(1-1.5%) pig iron by INR 500/MT to INR 28,500/MT ex-Kharagpur, eastern India.