Vietnam: Imported HRC offers correct, market awaits price revision by domestic players

Imported HRC prices into Vietnam witnessed a further decline of $5/tonne (t) from India and China. Buyers were awaiting the price policy announcements from the domestic steel producers for Mar'22 shipments.

Imported HRC offers -

• Indian-origin offers fell marginally to $745-750/t CFR from the previous week's $750/t CFR for SAE1006.
  
  
• Offers from Chinese tier-I mills also corrected marginally to $790/t CFR which were hovering around $795/t CFR for the past couple of weeks.
  
  
• Japanese mills were offering at $800/t CFR, down from $815/t CFR a week ago.
  
  
• However, bids from Vietnamese buyers were still heard at around $740/t CFR.
  
  

Factors impacting Vietnam's HRC market:

Limited export opportunities for Vietnam: The export opportunities for Vietnam mills have been low since mid-Dec'21 over the Christmas and New Year holidays. Furthermore, the European Union is to evaluate the imports from Vietnam for quarterly quotas in Mar-Apr'22 which weighed on trades of value-added steel.

Another reason has been the surge in the Omicron variant cases in most of the overseas countries which kept the market momentum slow.

Buyers awaiting price announcement from domestic producers: The Vietnamese buyers are looking forward to the Mar'22 price policy announcement from the key domestic steelmakers, Formosa and Hoa Phat. Imported HRC offers into Vietnam from India have been on a gradual decline since the beginning of Nov'21 when offers stood around $915/t CFR, whereas Chinese offers were around $845/t CFR.