Nepal: Mills Turn Active for Billet Bookings; Deals Reported

Active buying interest for Indian billets from Nepal. However for commercial grade Wire rod demand remained weak as per the trade participants.

The latest export offers for Induction grade Billet from Eastern India stood at USD 500-505/MT ex-mill, Durgapur & loaded to wagon Odisha. As per producers in Durgapur, regular bookings are being made by the re-rollers in Nepal.

However inquiries for the commercial grade Wire rod remained weak at the offers of around USD 583-585/MT, size-5.5 mm, ex-mill, Durgapur. The mills in Birgunj, Nepal confirmed lessen deals of Wire rod concluded with the medium mills in Durgapur.

A re-roller in Nepal claimed that Wire rod (prime grade) offers from major mills is being competitive over secondary/medium players offer. As per him, in recently 6 rakes of Wire rod booked from RINL at the price of USD 593-595/MT ex-mill (including 4 rakes on recent floated export tender to Nepal), equivalent to USD 625-630/MT CFR Raxual/Jogbani border, Nepal.

Meanwhile the landed cost of medium (secondary) mills Wire rod is stated to be around USD 610-615/MT. Thus, for Nepal based buyers, wire rod offers from large mills wire rod is appearing more preferable than the medium mills.

Further the Wire rod export offers to Nepal through the JSPL based in Jharkhand, East India reported at around USD 630-640/MT CFR Raxaul/Jogbani border, Nepal. However confirmation from company officials was not received till time of publishing this report.

Statistics

On an average Nepal's monthly imports from India for Wire rod is about 20,000-25,000 MT & Billets at around 1,00,000 MT, as per custom data maintained with SteelMint.

In 2018 (Jan-Aug), Nepal has imported 170,000 MT wire rod from India, while in 2017 (Jan-Dec) it was about 225,000 MT. Billet imports in Nepal from India stood at 786,000 MT in 2018 (Jan-Aug), whereas in 2017 (Jan-Dec) at around 10,82,000 MT.