The weekly Davis Index for CIS basic pig iron surged by $36/mt to $485/mt fob Black Sea on Friday. However, deals were sporadic because most suppliers preferred to hold off, anticipating a further uptrend in prices.
The demand for CIS pig iron was strong in the second week of December, but exporters agreed to sell only small cargoes as availability of the material is limited and prices are expected to increase significantly following robust ferrous scrap and steel product prices. The most recent booking was done at $500/mt fob Black Sea for 10,000mt of Russian pig iron to an international trader on Dec 10.
The Turkish imported pig iron market remained active and a Russian producer sold 5,000mt of low-manganese material at $495/mt fob Black Sea. The solid demand for pig iron in Turkey was attributed to surging steel product sales and a bullish imported ferrous scrap market.
The weekly Davis Index for CIS pig iron in Italy jumped by $14/mt to $493/mt cfr on Friday as suppliers raised offers. Some negotiations were taking place with no deals reported afterwards.
A sale of CIS-origin pig iron at $472-475/mt cfr to the USA was reported early in the week, but most market participants do not consider it as a representative deal because it was between two traders, one of which booked around 50,000mt of the material initially for China, but now redirected it to the USA.