SteelMint: India Steel Composite Index edges up as steel majors hike prices

Price hikes by the Indian steel majors this week drove SteelMint's India Steel Composite Index higher by 8.1% to 192.5. AM/NS India announced a second round of hikes by INR 4,500/t for flat products, while SAIL has increased prices of HRC and CRC by INR 6,000/t since the beginning of Mar'22.

The Index is backed by robust calculation methodologies and is derived from the long steel and flat steel composite indices. It serves as a benchmark for end-users, EPC contractors, and manufacturers in the iron and steel industry to settle contracts or understand the market cost of physical supply of commodities such as rebar, wire rod, structurals, HRC, CRC, plates as well as galvanised plates.

• • The Composite Index is assessed on a weekly basis: every Friday at 18:30 IST, as per the weighted average prices based on manufacturing capacity and production.
    
    
  • SteelMint considers the Composite Index with the base year being 3 Jan'20 (financial year 2019-2020) and the base value as 100.
    
    
  • The Composite Index doesn't give the absolute price.
    
    
  • The Indian steel industry is broadly classified into the BF-BOF and the electric/induction furnace routes. Keeping this broad classification in view, SteelMint proposes to release the Composite Index by considering both production routes by manufacturing capacity and the production weighted method to compute the index for India. For details click to view the methodology document.
    
    
  
  
  

The flat steel index stood at 193.2, up 8.1% from 178.7 a week ago. The prices of HRC, plates and CRC witnessed a sharp rise this week. Supply constraints, elevated prices of raw materials and coating materials remained the key factors behind the price hikes this month.

Export offers for flat products from India have been on the rise for the European market. For instance, current offers for HRC (SAE1006) stand at around $1,250/t CFR Europe, whereas for plates (S235, 12-40mm) offers are at around $1,400/t CFR.

The long steel index by 8.1% w-o-w to 191.8. Market sentiments for long products continued to remain largely similar to that of the previous week. Improved demand, supply side constraints and elevated prices of raw materials continued to boost trade level prices.