India: SAIL Receives Weak Response in Pig Iron Auction

SAIL conducted auction for 9,350 MT steel grade pig iron today in which it further raised base price by INR 100/MT against last auction.

As per participants in today's auction only about 1,500 MT (16%) material was booked at base price of INR 27,450/MT (ex-plant), while remaining about 7,850 MT (84%) material failed to fetch any response.

In last auction held on 22nd Apr'19, company had raised base price by INR 800-900/MT following which the response was also moderate and close to 35% material was booked at around INR 27,350/MT out of the offered quantity of 10,000 MT.

The weak response in today's auction attributes to competitive/falling offers of private mills. The offers by a private mill in Jajpur Odisha has reduced by INR 500/MT in a week to INR 27,300-27,400/MT, ex-plant. Similar fall is observed by Jharkhand & Durgapur based mills and the offers for steel grade are reported at INR 28,500-29,000/MT ex-Durgapur & INR 28,200-28,500/MT ex-Jharkhand.

Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), is India's govt. owned steel maker has an annual installed capacity of over 21 MnT. The producer have its plants in Central, East, South & Western India.