Growing ship breaking activities threaten steel prices in India

Archiv – India | The rising ship breaking activities at the India’s biggest ship breaking yard, Alang might cause a fall in the steel prices as hundreds of tonnes of scrap steel would add up to the steel supplies in India.India | The rising ship breaking activities at the India’s biggest ship breaking yard, Alang might cause a fall in the steel prices as hundreds of tonnes of scrap steel would add up to the steel supplies in India.
According to Commodity Online , it now looks that recession has cast a long shadow over shipping business too which includes cruises. This can be seen from the arrivals at Alang, which has about 125 vessels from the international shores lined up for ship breaking this year had only 40 vessels in the whole of last year for ship breaking. The increase in the ship breaking activity is believed be fallout of the shrinking export-import business and falling freight rates.
According to estimates, more than 600 ships are available for breaking in the international market due to the present recessionary scenario. Each of these ships weighs about 10,000 tonnes to 30,000 tonnes depending upon the capacity. In the wake of this fact, the ship breaking yard is estimated to recover nearly 12 lakh tonnes of scrap steel this year, which is almost double than the previous year.
With the increased availability of scrap steel, which is cost-effective input for rolling mills, the small mills would be able to reduce rebar price. However, as per the latest data released by Joint Plant Committee, Ministry of Steel, Indian consumption of finished steel during April 2008 to January 2009 was 42.321 million tonnes down by 2% YoY as compared to 43.175 million tonnes in April 2007 to January 2008, which may create a negative sentiment for the steel prices in coming days.
In addition to it, with government’s proposal to allow HRC imports without licensing requirements may lead to a further fall in the domestic steel prices. However, experts believe that there would be a positive run in the steel sector during next few weeks as there is a positive feeling among the investors on the basis of Central Government’s directions to the state governments to speed up development related infrastructure projects to combat unemployment and job loss.