The recent deal conclusions in the Gulf Council Cooperation have made it obvious that India can fetch deals only on the back of its short lead time deliveries and reliability over Chinese materials.

Indian mills are seen discovering the optimum position in placing their November shipment offers between the high production costs at the seller’s side and the sluggish sentiments and high competition in the buyer’s market. Any deviation from the competition’s price will plunge the scope of Indian hot-rolled coil exports in all the regions, sources tell Kallanish.

Indian boron-added cold-rolled coils, however, have gained after the conclusion of a couple of deals in Europe.

This week, market participants reported seeing a huge gap in bids and quotes. Bids for cfr from traditional markets like Turkey and Vietnam were reportedly lower than Indian fob prices. Kallanish assessed 2mm+ SAE 1006 Indian HRC at $600-605/t fob India for GCC and Turkey and $590-595/t fob India for Vietnam.

A few offers were also revealed at $620-630/t fob India for the base grade HRC; however, no firm offers or deals were retrieved on these levels.

This week, initial quotes for boron-added 2mm+ SAE 1006 Indian HRC were heard at $640-645/t cfr GCC, equating to $600-605/t fob India. According to Indian sources, a deal for 8,000 tonnes of SPHT-3 and SS400-grade HRC was concluded early this week at $650-655/t cfr GCC for October-end shipment.

“There is a stiff competition in GCC,” an Indian trading source informs. “Japan and India are in the market, Taiwan, China, and Saudi Arabia are also there and each origin is competing with each other in prices and deliveries. The only advantage India has over all the other origins is the short lead time for deliveries and the recent deal conclusion [8,000t] happened just because of this.”

Following the price release by Formosa and Hoa Phat, Vietnamese buyers prefer domestically available materials over imports. Owing to this, Indian mills have maintained their initial offers to Vietnam at $620-630/t cfr Ho Chi Minh City and are not aggressively engaged in the negotiations.

Moreover, major Indian suppliers to Vietnam say they are evaluating sentiment before rolling the offers for November deliveries and will begin offering mostly after 25 September.

HRC offers to Europe slightly corrected to $700/t cfr Antwerp levels, but were still unable to translate into deals. Following a deal concluded for 8,000-10,000t of boron-added DC-01 grade CRC at $800-810/t cfr Antwerp, the Indian CRC offers are now hovering at $810/t cfr Antwerp.

Meanwhile, in the domestic Indian market, the offers for E250-grade HRC surged to INR 56,750-57,000/t ($709.96) ex-Mumbai. Whereas offers for E350 and GI are heard at INR 59,500-60,000/t and INR 65,000/t ex-Mumbai, respectively.