As if aluminum buyers didn’t have enough to contend with, including long mill lead times and rising conversion premiums, they are also dealing with a rising Midwest premium.
Furthermore, Russia’s move to impose a 15% export tax on unwrought aluminum has had a profound impact on the Midwest delivery premium.
A recent Reuters article reports that the CME Midwest premium has jumped to a record high of $660 per ton ($0.30/lb). As a result, product manufacturers and their end users are facing an all-in price for unwrought raw material in excess of $3,000 per metric ton, even before conversion to product premiums are added in.
But the post goes on to explain that Russia’s export tax is not the sole reason for seriously elevated physical delivery premiums.
Over the last few years, the shift in exchange and off-market global inventory has been from North American and European markets toward Asia.
This morning in metals news: copper prices have stabilized over the last month; U.S. natural gas prices have surged to their highest level since 2014; and, lastly, Cleveland-Cliffs released its second-quarter results.
MetalMiner Senior Forecast Analyst Maria Rosa Gobitz earlier this month covered the copper market, for which she noted prices had started to consolidate.
The LME three-month copper price had surged to an all-time high May 10 of around $10,700 per metric ton. The price proceeded to cool over the next 5-6 weeks, falling as low as $9,070 per metric ton.
The copper price then consolidated and has traded largely sideways over the last month. On Wednesday, the price closed at $9,244 per metric ton, or up 1.92% month over month, per MetalMiner Insights data.
Natural gas prices surge
Meanwhile, in energy news, U.S. natural gas prices have reached their highest level since 2014, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported.
“In June, the U.S. natural gas spot price at the Henry Hub averaged $3.26 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), the highest price during any summer month (April–September) since 2014,” the EIA reported. “Prices in July have increased from June, averaging $3.67/MMBtu through the first two weeks of July. Spot prices for July 14 in every one of the more than 175 pricing hubs tracked by Natural Gas Intelligence exceeded $3.00/MMBtu.”
Cleveland-Cliffs releases Q2 results
Cleveland-Cliffs reported net income of $795 million during Q2 2021, compared with a loss of $108 million during Q2 2020.
“In the second quarter of 2021 we achieved all-time quarterly records in revenue, net income, and adjusted EBITDA,” Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said. “The numbers unequivocally confirm our efficiency in operating the new footprint, resulting from the integration of the two major steel companies acquired in 2020 as a single and indivisible mining and steel company. They also demonstrate our flawless execution in ramping up our state-of-the-art Direct Reduction plant in Toledo to the current level of production above nominal capacity.”
The past year since the last MetalMiner Forecasting Workshop has been a turbulent one for metals markets.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, plummeting demand, plant idlings, fast-recovering demand in certain sectors, bullwhip effects, material shortages, rising prices, rising delivery premiums — on and on and on. For metals buyers, planning out metals spend — let alone getting any material at all — proved to be a challenging proposition.
But now, well over a year into the pandemic, economic conditions are improving, broadly, in the United States.
It’s time to take a look at the year ahead.
As MetalMiner CEO Lisa Reisman and Don Hauser, vice president, business solutions,noted during a recent ROTH Capital Partners webinar that we remain in a bull market for metals, even as some have recently shown signs of consolidation. Copper, for example, has fallen off after reaching an all-time high in May. Steel prices continue to rise, but at a less frenetic pace than previously.
So, what does it all mean for metals buyers planning out their spend for the year ahead?
MetalMiner 2022 Forecasting Workshop
Industrial buying organizations can get a leg up on their budgeting and forecasting for the year ahead during this year’s virtual MetalMiner 2022 Forecasting Workshop, scheduled for 10 a.m.-1 p.m. CST, Aug. 25, 2021.
MetalMiner experts Reisman, Hauser, Editor-at-large Stuart Burns, Senior Forecast Analyst Maria Rosa Gobitz and Principal Data Analyst Marcos Briones Álvarez will lead the three-hour workshop.
Participants will gain insights into, among other things:
MetalMiner experts recently joined ROTH Capital Partners for a webinar that covered a wide range of metals topics, including oil prices, macroeconomic trends, and insights into the aluminum, steel and copper markets.
phive2015/Adobe Stock
The webinar, which took place July 14, followed up on a previous MetalMiner-Roth webinar on May 20, 10 days after metals surged to record highs. Copper, for example, reached an all-time on May 10. MetalMiner CEO Lisa Reisman and Vice President of Business Solutions Don Hauser joined to share their insights on various markets, recapping metals movements in the two months since that peak.
If you missed it live, register here to receive a copy of the webinar recording to hear all of Reisman and Hauser’s insights from the hourlong webinar.
On July 28, get a sneak peek of the MetalMiner annual budgeting and forecasting workshop (a three-hour virtual event that will take place in August 2021). Get ready to plan for 2022.
Bull market
While prices have come off of the record highs seen in May, they remain elevated. In short, we remain in a bull market.
“We are still in a bull market,” Reisman said. “The nonferrous metals are taking a pause but unless we see them start to fall off toward support levels … they’re still in a bull market.”
However, in terms of the “supercycle” narrative — which we have covered in this space previously — MetalMiner remains skeptical.
“The reason we’re struggling with the big supercycle narrative is that we would expect to see a decade, 1o years, of sustained, upward demand,” she said. “We don’t quite see that.”
With that said, metals demand currently is strong across a range of industries.
The CME’s Comex and London Metal Exchange (LME) are squaring up for the industrial revolution that is electrification, according to recent posts by Bloomberg and the Financial Times.
Both exchanges are busy developing and, more importantly, marketing products that cater to industry’s need to hedge exposure to forward prices for key battery ingredients. Whether for car batteries, electronic goods or power grid storage, the key metals are demanded by a common technology: lithium-ion batteries.
Both exchanges have launched identical lithium hydroxide cash settled contracts based on the Fastmarkets prices for China, Japan and South Korea – the key battery-producing regions.
So far, volumes are light. But with lithium hydroxide prices up some 86% this year, the market is arguably crying out for a hedging mechanism.
Initially, miners were said to be reluctant to support such a product, preferring long-term mine-to-consumer contracts. The same is the case for aluminum.
Prices for hot rolled coil in Western Europe have started to slow on subdued demand, due to the summer season and competitive import offers, market participants told MetalMiner.
The flat rolled product has transacted in the past week at closer to €1,200 ($1,415) per metric ton exw for November delivery. That compares with a price range of €1,150-1,200 in late June, sources said.
Producers sought to push HRC prices up to €1,250 ($1,475), one trading source told MetalMiner. End users, however, did not accept the increase.
Severe flooding late last week in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state, however, have created logistics disruptions in those areas. This prompted ThyssenKrupp Steel to declare on Friday a force majeure on its deliveries, a spokeswoman for the German group told MetalMiner.
“That doesn’t help the supply for sure” as it could tighten the market and mitigate any price declines, the analyst warned.
Higher temperatures in the European summer as well as workers and businesses taking holidays in July and August, resulting in lower activity, are now putting pressure on prices for the flat rolled products.
The import market is also adding pressure to local prices, however, sources noted.
Offers on HRC from mills in Japan, Indonesia and Taiwan are about $1,170-1,200 per ton CFR European ports for September/October delivery.
“I think that it is fair to say that import activity will pick up,” one analyst said.
Lead times on the domestic market are in some cases as far out as Q1 of 2022, he added.
Uncertainty over imports
The analyst warned, however, that it is for now uncertain what kind of impact Russia’s planned introduction of a 15% export tax from Aug. 1 on all steel products – semis and finished – would have on import markets into Europe.
China is also weighing the introduction of an export tax on its steel exports in order to cool its domestic market, one source said, after canceling in May the export rebate on the 13% value-added tax failed to bring the desired effect, sources noted.
Meanwhile, the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, opened up an antidumping investigation in June on hot dipped galvanized coil imports from Russia and Turkey. That prompted producers in those two countries to increase offer volumes, the trader said.
The United Steelworkers Union and Allegheny Technologies Inc. (ATI) reached a tentative deal July 2 to end a three-month strike, a deal they went on to officially ratify July 13.
Meanwhile, much of the steelmaking capacity in the Chinese steelmaking hub of Tangshan is reportedly back online after earlier restrictions, Sohrab Darabshaw writes.
Lastly, Chinese steel exports rose in June compared with the previous month.
Better time your metal market purchases with the MetalMiner Insights platform. Request a demo.
The Renewables Monthly Metals Index (MMI) dropped by 0.8% for this month’s reading.
(Editor’s note: This report also includes the MMI for grain-oriented electrical steel, or GOES.)
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Cobalt price bounces back
Last month, we noted a plunge in the cobalt price through the first two months of the second quarter.
In June, however, the cobalt price bounced back.
According to pricing information on the LME website, the LME cobalt price fell as low as $42,500 per metric ton in June before recovering. The price has settled in around $50,500 per metric ton over the last week.
Among other materials, cobalt goes into electric vehicle batteries, making it an object of increasingly higher demand. As automakers augment their electric vehicle offerings and announce long-term emissions targets, cobalt demand will increase.
This morning in metals news: ArcelorMittal said it plans to make its Sestao plant zero carbon emissions; meanwhile, the Producer Price Index for final demand increased by 1.0% in June; and, lastly, U.S. steel prices continue to rise.
ArcelorMittal announces aim to build zero-carbon-emissions Sestao steel plant
pvl/Adobe Stock
ArcelorMittal this week said it plans to make its steel plant in Sestao, Spain, the “world’s first full-scale zero carbon-emissions steel plant.”
“The development is the result of a memorandum of understanding signed today with the Government of Spain that will see an investment of €1 billion in the construction of a green hydrogen direct reduced iron (DRI) plant at its plant in Gijón, as well as a new hybrid electric arc furnace (EAF),” ArcelorMittal said.
The steelmaker said the new DRI plant will have capacity of 2.3 million metric tons. Of that total, 1 million metric tons would go to Sestao to be used as feedstocks in its electric arc furnaces (EAFs).
PPI up 1.0%
Elsewhere, the Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand increased by 1.0% in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
