News Room - Steel Industry

Posted on 10 Jul 2009

ThyssenKrupp hopes to hike steel prices in mid-Aug

Germany's largest steelmaker ThyssenKrupp aims to push through more price rises for its carbon steel products in mid-August for quarterly contracts effective Oct. 1, a company spokesman said on Thursday.

 

ThyssenKrupp said last week it had raised prices on quarterly steel contracts but declined to give details.

 

A source had told Reuters the prices were raised by an average of 25 euros per tonne effective July 1.

 

Analysts said the steel industry should have already bottomed out in terms of prices and demand, with steelmakers making their first moderate price increases as order books in Europe and the United States improved over the past month.

 

However, they put much of the improvement down to restocking rather than demand from end-users.

 

ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steelmaker, said late in June it was planning to restart some of its idled capacity in the United States and Brazil.

 

The spokesman for ThyssenKrupp also said the company hoped to get the "same price cuts, more or less" that ArcelorMittal had obtained from miners for iron ore products.

 

These were cuts of 28.2 percent for iron fines, 44.5 percent for iron lumps and 48.3 percent for iron pellets, he said.

 

"We have not signed the contracts yet and we expect to do that in the coming weeks, " he said, adding the prices would be retroactive from April 1.

 

Miner Rio Tinto also cut iron ore prices for Japanese steelmakers last month by a third.

 

At 0926 GMT ThyssenKrupp shares were up 2.89 percent, outpacing the 1.42 percent rise in Frankfurt's blue chip .