The Italian steel market is slowly returning from its summer break. The first signals however from market sources already indicate that mills are confident they will further push up transaction prices for coil in the market.

Before the holidays, mills began sending higher new offers into the market, but during the last two weeks the international coil market has recovered further and import offers have risen significantly. As a result Italian mills are now targeting to push HRC transaction levels at €500/tonne ($588/t) ex-works base and above.

“The market is still silent this week, but I have heard import offers into Italy are now as high as €550/t cfr for HRC,” a senior Italian source comments. “I think European mills will soon manage to get at least €500/t ex-works base for HRC in the Italian market.”

A North European service centre also notes this week that Italian mills pushed up their offers for European clients to as much as €520-550/t delivered base. This is in line with new offers from large German mills.

According to Kalllanish price series, Chinese HRC export prices are now approaching €485/t fob. When they last reached a similar level, in January this year, Italian HRC domestic prices stood at some €530-535/t ex-works base.