Market trends for Stainless Steel - April 2023

Molybdenum 

What is happening with the price of Molybdenum? At the end of 2022 this material closed at around 64.000 $/to. at a comparatively high level. Mills have been warned and came up with increasing prices from 2023. But the development got even crazier with Molybdenum increasing up to 105.000 $/to. peak in the beginning of February. A reason for this could be seen in the strikes in Peru, one of the biggest producers for Ferro-Molybdenum and the higher demand from China as they’re starting to produce higher quality grades more and more. Of course, all prices for Moly-grades have been under big upward pressure or have even been stopped to be offered. Now, Mid-April, Molybdenum is coming back to a more normal level around 44.500 $/to. We expect the prices to remain stable and normalize at the price-level that we’ve been used to before within the range of  

40.000 – 45.000 $/to. 

Chromium 

Chromium have been unchanged from Q4/2022 to Q1/2023 – staying at 1,49 $/lb. The price-negotiation for Q2/2023 then came with an increase to 1,72 $/lb. due to the remaining high uncertainty on the supply from South-Africa and the increasing demand from China. Where the prices will move for Q3/2023 is very difficult to predict, especially with the current demand situation in the market. 

Freight-situation 

Sea freight 

Nearing the bottom? Freight rates have been in decline for more than a year now, and it’s clearly reasonable to ask whether the bottom is about to be reached.  

The CCFI index shows that we probably haven’t reached the bottom yet. In the recent spike it reached index 3565 ultimo JAN-22 and in the first week of APR-23 it had declined to index 953 whereas the first week of APR-19 (pre pandemic) it was just below index 800 indicating there’s room for further downward development in the rates.  

Road 

The situation is stable and we’re not facing any significant challenges only thing was the strike in Finland where all harbors was closed for almost two weeks in FEB-23, but with good help and a flexible partner we managed without any significant delays. 

In the Central European market, the freight, both prices and availability are rather stable – probably due to slightly lower demand and traffic in general. But we need to stay very cautious, as there is still a big lack of drivers and trained personnel. 

Bars 

The picture in bar-business differs a lot in terms of origin. Looking into the European origin, the delivery-times are rather short and the willingness to negotiate base-prices came back for the first time since the Covid 19 pandemic, meaning that there are some free capacities. What causes some trouble for the European mills is the tough competition from India – here we also see shorter delivery-times than usual, and we see rather low prices compared to Europe. This makes it really hard to compare those two products with each other. The alloy-surcharge in Europe is higher than the effective price from India in some areas. For the Safeguard-quota opening 1st of April 2023 we have again seen the capacity vanish within one day, meaning the importers have had a big number of containers already waiting in the ports. 

Sheets 

We don’t experience any challenges on the supply side as many of our mills have free capacity. Our sourcing is mainly focused on EU origin due to the missing price advantage from Asia. Price levels have been decreasing and still are. Effective prices are almost at the level of the alloy-surcharge which for sure can’t continue and if it does, we’re pretty sure that the mills will shut down parts of their production to minimize their costs/loss.  

Welded tubes 

Very short delivery time, down to two weeks on commodities (OD up to 273mm) from EU and prices are at a critical level seen from a production point of view. We have not yet seen the turn in the decreasing tendency.   

Seamless tubes 

On the seamless tubes we still see long delivery-times and rather stable base-prices. Still Ukraine producers are running well and without big disturbances. What we also can see is the material from India pushing into Europe becomes more – following the Safeguard-quotas. But here also prices are key as the Alloy-surcharge in Europe and the higher energy-costs are having an impact on the competition between the two different origins. 

Fittings & Flanges 

The situation regarding fittings & flanges differs a lot depending on which product you’re looking at. We have welded fittings which are rather stable in terms of price and availability, while flanges from Asia are volatile in prices. Especially looking at the competition between China and India one could really experience different approaches and developments in the strategy and pricing. While China is cheaper one month, India is very aggressive the next month.