Posted on 20 Nov 2019
Brazilian pig iron market players have increased their offers since the beginning of November. These were driven by higher demand and low availability of material in the market, sources tell Kallanish.
“The Brazilian market is showing higher demand for pig iron. Most producers increased their prices while monitoring the market and evaluating how to adapt their output to new transactions in 2020,” a source says. Local mills, however, do not have the availability of material for export, nor pig iron in stock until January, he adds.
According to market participants, the average pig iron export price is at $290/tonne fob Brazil.
The latest data from the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade (Mdic) show that the country increased its pig iron exports both monthly and cumulatively year-on-year in October.
Brazil shipped 321,840 tonnes of pig iron during October. This volume is the highest that the country has exported since September 2015, when shipments abroad reached 369,280t.
October exports were up by 60.9% or 121,820t more compared to the same month in 2018 and 12.1% more than September`s 287,270t. Pig iron exports over the first ten months increased to 2,241,343t or by 46.9% when compared to the January-October period of 2018.
The main destination for Brazilian pig iron in the period was the US which took 45% of the country's total exports. Holland was the second-largest importer with a share of 14%, followed by Taiwan and Mexico with shares of 10% and 6.6%, respectively.
Pig iron exports had a fob value of $101.6 million in October, or 20.6% more y-o-y, while the cumulative export value was $785.7m, up by 31.0% compared to the same period in 2018. The average pig iron export value year-to-date is $351/t fob or -10.7% less than in the same period of 2018, Mdic confirms.
