The sleepy CIS merchant pig iron trade has been stirred up with just one sale in the past week, when a trader sold a very long position to a buyer in Latin America. Meanwhile both Turkish scrap and Chinese iron ore reached new all time records last week.

A 30,000-tonne cargo was contracted by a Peruvian buyer for June loading, at $550/tonne fob Black Sea. The lower-than-apparently-workable price level reflects the length of the position, which was taken in January, according to market participants. The renewed rise in freight rates is also likely to have contributed to the gross deal value, they add.

Although CIS suppliers are currently absent from the market due to holidays, offer indications remain at last week's wide range of around $570-630/t fob, depending on volume, destination and quality. In the absence of bids, offers to the US are perceived at around $590-610/t cfr, while Mediterranean buyers are facing around $600/t cfr as a tradable price for regular basic pig iron (BPI).

With domestic US scrap increases at a maximum of around $20/t for obsolete grades, there is expected to be ongoing resistance to book CIS material at the offered levels. The US was not heard to have booked any pig iron in the past week, and the situation is only likely to change if competition for purchases, for example from China, increases.