CIS pig iron export prices have received a welcome boost from Vale's iron ore supply disruption, as well as from fresh seasonal demand from the United States.

Kallanish assessed its newly-launched weekly fob Black Sea pig iron price at $340/tonne on Friday, an increase of around $10/t on-week, pegged by several sales at higher levels.

The sales were concluded at levels of around $360/t cfr Nola, as CIS producers kept their offers firm for the past three weeks, despite US buyers' recent reluctance to book at higher levels. Ongoing expectations of a bullish US domestic scrap market next month amid seasonally rising steel demand and prices have boosted pig iron imports from both the CIS and Brazil.

But while US buyers have succumbed to higher offers with new bookings, the CIS’s second-largest merchant pig iron market, Italy, continues to resist higher prices.

The reluctance is partially due to high port-side stocks of imported material from Russia, Ukraine and what Italians have coined "…Donbass material.” The latter is pig iron supplied at slightly lower prices from mills in Ukraine’s breakaway eastern republics. Offers to Italy from Russia and Ukraine have risen to $360-370/t cfr Maghera levels. However, with port-side material still available at around $350/t cfr and slightly lower for Donbass material, there have been no deals at these higher levels, local market participants say.

Turkey – the CIS’s third-largest market – is also on the fence, as scrap prices continue to fluctuate. Nevertheless, Donbass material is finding its way into the country in small volumes, in addition to some Iranian lots, sources say, thereby preventing large CIS pig iron bookings.

Offers of Russian higher-purity pig iron to the US and Europe rose again as Kallanish went to press, to $370/t cfr US and $380/t cfr Europe.