India: SAIL Receives Good Response in Pig Iron Auction

SAIL's pig iron auction conducted today for 3,000 MT steel grade pig iron from its Rourkela Steel plant (eastern India) has received quite good response as total allotted quantity has been sold out with a increase of INR 50-100/MT over the base price.

As per sources, in today's auction the company had kept base price at INR 27,250/MT, although the material have been fetch high bids of INR 50-100/MT to INR 27,300-27,350/MT and total of 3,000 MT material have been sold out on ex-plant basis.

The response was good in line with rally steel (Billet) prices. In addition, short supply by private mills in neighboring markets is another key factor behind fetching good response in this auction.

The private mills in eastern India, Jharkhand have halted bookings in previous price of INR 27,500/MT and looking the price range of INR 28,000/MT ex-plant.

Similarly in Durgapur where couple of merchant pig iron suppliers have raised offers to INR 28,300-28,500/MT as against last week at INR 27,500-28,000/MT ex-plant. Meanwhile in Jajpur, Odisha offers through the Mesco Steels heard at INR 27,000-27,200/MT ex-plant.

SAIL is India's largest steel producer in terms of capacity which is about 21 MnT per annum. Meanwhile in context to Pig iron NINL is the largest merchant producer of pig iron with an annual hot metal production capacity of about 1.1 MnT.

NINL's (Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd) fresh offers are due since 12th May'19 and as per sources the company likely to release prices in coming week. Last domestic offers by NINL was at INR 27,000-27,400/MT ex-plant, Cuttack, Odisha.