Recent breakdowns experienced at two major Indian mills, coupled with a planned shutdown, have eased excess supply of hot rolled coil in India. In fact, market participants tell Kallanish they calculate there will be a supply shortage from Indian mills of at least 150,000-200,000 tonnes.

"A major steel company in India faced issues at its blast furnace operations, which lasted for 5-7 days; it coincided with their planned shutdown, and at the same time another steel company also underwent the same kind of breakdown at its operations, which summed up to a production loss of around 150,000t of HRC," a reliable company source informs.

"This has kind of offset the sluggish demand prevailing in the market for the time being in India and also made India’s position strong in the export market as they do not have excess supply to negotiate for in the international market," the source adds.

According to sources, Indian structural-grade HRC offers are stable on-week at $670-680/tonne cfr Spain, Antwerp, and Italy. A few small-tonnage deals were done by Indian mills at €610/t ($670) cfr Italy this week. Meanwhile, according to a source, Indian HRC offers for 2-meter-wide material were noted at above $700/t cfr Antwerp, while another source informs offers were hovering at $720-725/t cfr Antwerp for the same width.

The above content is excerpted from：https://www.kallanish.com/en/news/steel/market-reports/article-details/indian-hrc-production-shortage-offset-prevailing-sluggish-sentiments-0723/