On the first day after the festival, most steel mills in the country have pushed up sentiment, and the spot market ushered in a red-hot start. Zhuochuang information data show that after the opening of the Spring Festival in 2024, the steel market has shown a strong rising trend, from the point of view of specific products, the billet price has increased by 100 yuan/ton, the plate price has increased by 30 yuan/ton to 80 yuan/ton, the building materials price has increased by 10 yuan/ton to 50 yuan/ton, and the price of profile products has increased by 10 yuan/ton to 40 yuan/ton. "On February 18, the average price of rebar in major cities across the country was 4042 yuan/ton, up 11 yuan/ton from the previous trading day. The Mysteel rebar price index was at 4058 points, up 6 points from the previous trading day." Wu Jianhua, construction steel analyst of Shanghai Steel Union steel business group, said that at present, the long process steel mill basically maintains normal production, and the short process steel mill has not started due to the Spring Festival holiday and other reasons, and the overall output is at an absolute low level. Lange steel network monitoring data show that on February 18, the national comprehensive steel price of Lange steel was 4275 yuan/ton, an increase of 16 yuan/ton compared with the festival; Tangshan billet price is 3650 yuan/ton, during the Spring Festival rose 100 yuan/ton. Various steel varieties rose to different degrees.
"Because the Spring Festival has just passed, the overall market continues to be weak in supply and demand. On February 18, the average daily output of hot metal in 201 production enterprises across the country was 2.1817 million tons, a decrease of 0.7 million tons compared with before the holiday. Of the 201 production enterprises in the country, 78 steel mills stopped production of 121 blast furnaces, with a total volume of 121,000 cubic meters, an increase of 2210 cubic meters compared with the pre-holiday, and the blast furnace operating rate of major steel enterprises by volume was 75.82%, down 0.2% from the pre-holiday." Wang Guoqing, an analyst at the Lange Steel Research Center, said. Zhuo Chuang information analyst Li Huan believes that the price of steel products has risen in different amplitude, related to the current market operation background. First of all, in terms of demand, before the Spring Festival, the futures went down, the downstream cautiously watched, and did not conduct replenishment operation, so after the Spring Festival, the downstream concentrated replenishment, driving the staged release of demand, short-term merchants shipped smoothly, and played a role in promoting the price rise to a certain extent; Secondly, in terms of mentality, after the Spring Festival, it is closely connected with the "golden three", and the market mentality is more optimistic, and the demand and market have strong expectations for the peak season; Thirdly, from the perspective of the operation of steel mills, the maintenance and production reduction of steel mills in January basically came to an end, and the normal production time of different steel mills in February was different, so the output showed structural differentiation, and the supply pressure of different steel products was different, resulting in different product growth performance.
When steel prices have risen, upstream raw material prices have fallen. According to the data of Shanghai Steel Union, on February 18, some steel mills in Hebei and Tianjin put forward the first round of decline in the purchase price of coke, the range is 100 yuan/ton of wet quenching coke, 110 yuan/ton of dry quenching coke, and it will be implemented from 00:00 on February 19, 2024. "The supply of upstream coke enterprises is stable, and the shipment pressure of some coke enterprises appears. Mysteel investigated the average daily coke output of the full sample independent coke enterprises of 648,900 tons/day, an increase of 0.03,000 tons/day on a week-on-week basis, and the coke inventory of 1.115,500 tons, an increase of 132,000 tons on a week-on-week basis. At the same time, the downstream steel plant is slow to resume production, and the inventory is good, the coke available days are normal, and the demand for replenishment after the holiday is not strong." Tang Brother Ying, coke analyst of Shanghai Steel's coal coke division, believes that the weak price of coke after the holiday is mainly due to the continued loss of steel mills during the Spring Festival and the pursuit of profit. Mysteel l2 last year on the 17th survey results show that the week Tangshan mainstream sample steel average molten iron excluding tax cost of 2,944 yuan/ton, the average billet tax cost of 3,783 yuan/ton, week down 10 yuan/ton, compared with the current billet factory price of 3570 yuan/ton on February 17 this year, the average loss of steel mill 213 yuan/ton. Weekly reduction of 30 yuan/ton.
The upstream shipment pressure, the mentality is weak, the downstream steel mills continue to lose money, and the demand for replenishment is not high, so the coke market opens a new round of price cuts after the holiday. Wang Guoqing said that the reason for the price reduction of steel enterprises on coke is mainly that the current terminal site has not resumed work, the demand is slow to start, the steel community warehouse is obvious, the steel mill is difficult to reverse the loss situation, the superimposed part of the blast furnace is still in the overhaul stage, and the coke just needs to be weak, so the first day of construction came out the news of the drop. However, Wang Guoqing pointed out that the profit of steel enterprises after the holiday has improved slightly, especially the improvement of the two-week inventory of raw materials cycle, taking three-level rebar as an example, the data of Lange Steel Research Center show that on February 18, the loss of three-level rebar spot raw materials is estimated at 21 yuan/ton, which is 1 yuan/ton less than that before the holiday; The estimated loss of raw material inventory for two weeks is 23 yuan/ton, which is 41 yuan/ton less than before the holiday.
