Iran: Billets market subdued on limited export deals, trade on IME

The Iranian billets export market has seen a slowdown in deals following the global trends and a sharp drop in Chinese rebar futures.

Towards the closing of last week, an Iranian mill concluded an export deal for 45,000 t of steel billets, sources informed SteelMint. According to market sources, the mill achieved a price level of $625/tonnes (t), FOB. The shipment is likely to be scheduled for Dec'21.

Iran's another leading steel exporter floated an export tender for 30,000 t of steel billets for December shipments. As per market sources, the tender received a bid of $597/t but is yet to be concluded.

"The market was very silent this week. It would be interesting to see if the company concludes the tender at $597/t FOB as it is quite a sharp drop against the last price of $620-625/t FOB with the recent recovery in futures", said an Iranian source.

According to data maintained with SteelMint, the Chinese rebar futures contract for Jan'22 delivery on the Shanghai Futures Exchange closed at RMB 4,246/t ($663/t), a d-o-d decline of RMB 11/t ($2/t) on 10 Nov'21 and also down by RMB 139/t ($22/t), w-o-w. However, today's re-bar futures have shown a recovery of RMB 197/t ($31).

Domestic billet trade on IME falls: Domestic billet sales on the Iran Mercantile Exchange (IME) decreased by around 6% w-o-w with the average price remaining range-bound. Around 113,200 t of billets were traded in the last one week at an average sales price of 139,227 Rial on IME, as per data maintained with SteelMint.

Last week, around 120,550 t of billets were traded at an average sales price of 138,747 Rial on IME.