Demand for merchant pig iron continues to accelerate in all traditional buying regions. China's appetite has encouraged the US and Italy to start booking new volumes, and traders to restock in the past week. The resulting activity has lifted prices up, with producers raising offers.

During the first half of September a Ukrainian producer finally sold a large cargo to the US at just under $545/tonne cfr Nola for November loading, netting back to around $485/t fob. This raised price expectations for further sales from the CIS and Brazil to over $560/t cfr Nola. Brazilian offers to the US were at $560-565/t cfr for December loading material, but no sales were concluded in the past ten days.

China's buying continued, with two more CIS cargoes booked at $550-555/t cfr, netting back to $480-485/t fob, with $80/t freight. This brings the total booked in the past six weeks to over 0.5 million tonnes of CIS and Brazilian pig iron. The sheer volume of China's demand is encouraging interest mainly from traders at the moment, it appears, with several lots booked for the Mediterranean by large stockists.