Research

Forecasts and market analysis based on price assessments from Fastmarkets MB and Fastmarkets AMM

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May 2018 | Galvanized Steel and Tinplate Market Tracker


Taiwanese mills lead the way in terms of margins: Asian Market Highlights


Not unusually, we recorded a year-to-date peak in real-time margins for Chinese coated spot prices last month.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has just published some dramatic and entirely positive developments for underlying coated steel consumption in China. After output of refrigerators fell 2.3% year-on-year in the first quarter, they now say that after four months, output has in fact increased by 2.3% thanks to a 14.5% surge in April. Similarly, washing machines surged almost 6% in April, meaning that manufacturers have almost fully recovered (-0.2%) from their first quarter decline. Better still, motor vehicles are now higher after four months, albeit by just 0.4% thanks to a 10.8% surge in April. Unfortunately for construction-related coaters, however, it appears that just as the manufacturing sectors are picking up, construction activity is finally slowing down with new real-estate starts, for example, which surged 9.7% year-on-year in Q1 slipping to 7.3% after four...

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