After almost three months of steady recovery, Chinese hot-rolled coil prices have turned down during the last two weeks as the country prepared for the New Year celebrations.

Globally, the main markets such as North America, Europe the CIS and Turkey, are still holding firm and the recovery in HRC prices in most regions continued last week. Nevertheless, a rapid spread of any price weakness in the Asian market could well quickly impact the rest of the world. The Vietnamese HRC imports market, for example, fell last week, before closing down for Tet.

In Shanghai on Thursday afternoon last week, 5.5x1,500mm Q235 HRC was trading at CNY 3,870-3,880/tonne ($558-560/t), CNY 30/t lower from the previous Friday. On the Shanghai Futures Exchange, the May 2020 HRC contract closed CNY 48/t lower than Wednesday and CNY 70/t lower over the week at CNY 3,521/t.

Futures prices have slumped in recent days. With spot markets now firmly closed for the holidays, inventory has been steadily piling up. Overall HRC inventories were up 9.8% last week to 3.01 million tonnes, according to a count by SMM. Of the total, mill inventories increased 7.7% to 946,000t, while social inventory increased 10.8% to 2.06mt.