Stainless steel market and industry present characteristics

Since August, China's major stainless steel market ushered in a round of price increases. At present, the overall inventory level of the global market is relatively low. In September, after the steel mills in Europe, America and other places ended their summer breaks, downstream users may enter the market due to the need to rebuild their inventory, further pushing up prices. However, people in the industry pointed out that although the global stainless steel market prices have started to rebound as a result of the rise in nickel prices and the improvement of economic data in Europe and the United States, the current fundamentals of the market have not fundamentally improved, so the uncertainty in the market outlook remains strong.

Recently, stainless steel market and industry have the following features.

Since the beginning of this year, the price of stainless steel in the domestic market has been falling, among which the decline in nickel prices and sluggish demand are the main reasons. In early July, the price of 304/2B and 2mm cold rolled coil in Wuxi market fell to 14,900 yuan/ton due to the continuous decline in nickel prices; by the end of the month, the price of Wuxi market picked up again as the nickel price rebounded. To 15,400 yuan / ton, but compared with the highest price of 18,500 yuan / ton at the beginning of the year, the decline reached 3,100 yuan / ton. However, since the beginning of August, the price of this variety in the Wuxi market has been rising, and the current mainstream market price has risen to 16,300 yuan/ton.

Since August, the rising trend of Lon Nickel has caused the market to change its previous decline. Operators are also looking forward to the rise of the market outlook. At the same time, market demand has shown signs of improvement and orders from steel mills have increased. Affected by this, Baosteel announced that the domestic market price of austenitic stainless steel coils in August maintained its July price. Among them, the price of 304 hot rolled coil is 14,500 yuan/ton, the price of 304/2B, thickness 2mm cold rolled coil is 15,500 yuan/ton, and the price of 430 thickness and 2mm cold rolled coil is 9,600 yuan/ton.

In the first half of this year, China's crude steel production was approximately 9.19 million tons, which represented a year-on-year increase of 17.4% (yield of 7.824 million tons in the same period of last year). Among them, 300 series stainless steel production was approximately 4.256 million tons, an increase of 8.5% year-on-year, accounting for 46.3% of the total output; 200 series stainless steel production was approximately 3.09 million tons, an increase of 30.9%, accounting for 33.7%; 400 series stainless steel production is approximately 1.84 million tons, an increase of 19.7% year-on-year, accounting for 20%. From the above data, due to the continued decline in nickel prices this year, steel mills have reduced their production share of the 300-series products in order to reduce risk, while 200-series stainless steel production has increased significantly due to the production of some integrated plants.

Despite the weak performance of the market, the total output of 5 major steel mills such as TISCO Stainless, Baosteel Stainless, Jiugang, Zhangjiagang Posco (hereinafter referred to as Zhangpu) and Lianzhong totaled 4.04 million tons, accounting for 44% of domestic stainless steel output. . Among them, the Qingshan Group's output accounts for about 11% of the national output, and the Jinguang Group's (Southwest Stainless and Yunnan Tiangao) production accounts for about 5.3% of the country's total output. In the first half of the year, stainless steel crude stainless steel output was basically the same as that of the same period of last year, an increase of 0.43%; Baosteel Stainless had a slight decline, a year-on-year decrease of 2.3%; Zhangpu increased nearly 5% year-on-year; Jiugang due to maintenance in May This led to a loss of production, which was a decrease of 9.5% year-on-year. In the first half of the year, the main driving forces for domestic stainless steel production growth were Qingshan Group (up 18.7% year-on-year), Jinguang Group (up 42% year-on-year), Beihai Chengde, and Huale Alloys.

However, in the face of the current oversupply market, new projects are still continuing. According to relevant news, Beihai Chengde Stainless Steel recently ordered a cold rolling production line with a capacity of 600,000 tons/year from Siemens Metals Technology. The production line can produce 200-series and 300-series stainless steel cold-rolled strips. The new equipment is scheduled to be put into production in 2014. After production, the company plans to produce stainless steel broadband. In addition, the equipment can also deal with hot-rolled annealing pickled stainless steel, can be a thickness of 1mm ~ 5mm steel rolled into a thickness of 0.3mm ~ 3mm steel, bandwidth 800mm ~ 1300mm. At present, Beihai Chengde is mainly engaged in the production of nickel ore and stainless steel narrow strips. It is expected that the total stainless steel output will reach 1.6 million tons by the beginning of 2014. After the completion of all expansion in 2015, the production capacity will reach 4 million tons per year.

In the first half of the year, China’s apparent consumption of stainless steel was 6.855 million tons, an increase of 14% year-on-year (61.3 million tons in the same period of last year). According to statistical data from relevant agencies, as of the end of June, Wuxi's stainless steel market stock was approximately 193,000 tons, an increase of 3.2% from the previous month and a year-on-year increase of 2.7%. Among them, the 200-series inventory is 9309 tons, which accounts for 5% of the total inventory; 300-series inventory is 154,600 tons, accounting for 80% of the total inventory; 400-series inventory is 29,300 tons, accounting for 15%. At the end of June, the stock of the Foshan market was approximately 129,000 tons, a decrease of 2.3% from the previous month. In addition to other stocks such as steel mills, it is estimated that the actual consumption of stainless steel in the first half of the year in China should be about 6 million tons.

In early July, the total stainless steel inventories in the Wuxi market was 181,000 tons, a decrease of 6.3% from the previous month; at the end of July, the total inventory was 180,000 tons, a decrease of 6.6% from the previous month.

In the first half of the year, China imported a total of 344,700 tons of various types of stainless steel, a year-on-year decrease of 13.2%; exports of various types of stainless steel 1,297,000 tons, an increase of 25.3%; net exports of 950,000 tons, an increase of 49.4%. As in the past, in the first half of the year, except for the cold-rolled stainless steel belts, which were still net imports, the remaining stainless steels were net exports. Hot-rolled stainless steel coils and cold-rolled stainless steel plates (width > 600mm) are the two main varieties of stainless steel import and export trade in China. Among them, the hot-rolled stainless steel coil accounted for 19% of the total import of stainless steel in China, accounting for 37.8% of the total export volume; cold-rolled stainless steel plate accounted for 37.2% of China's total stainless steel imports, accounting for 30.8% of China's total exports.

Affected by unfavorable factors such as low demand from external markets, rising export costs, and frequent trade frictions, the export situation in the second half of the year is still not optimistic. At the same time, the oversupply of the global stainless steel market has further exacerbated the fierce competition in the market.