Across the board we are seeing slight to significant price increases. But the markets and major economies are still fairly calm.

Disclaimer

Macroeconomic developments

China

China has struggled to get its economy into gear, but now we have seen a positive development for the first time in 2024.

Industrial production increased by 7% against expectations of 5.5%, the highest increase in almost two years. Retail sales have also increased more than expected, fuelling optimism about the Chinese economy.

USA

The US economy is still more resilient than expected, as we described last month.

Yesterday’s meeting in the US central bank, FED, did not bring any surprises, and the interest rate remains unchanged. The FED did state that they expect 3 interest rate cuts in 2024, each of 0.25%. This non-event was a relief to the financial markets, and the stock and commodity market reacted with a slight increase.

Copper

The copper price started to rise last week (mid-March) and is currently at its highest level since April 2023.

The price jump happened after 19 Chinese plants started talking about lowering production in order to push prices up. The price has now pushed past several resistance points. A resistance point is a point where the price normally goes down again.

Aluminium

Aluminium has risen slightly since February, but not as much as we might have expected. This is possibly because we already saw an increase earlier in the year amid rumours of a new sanctions package against Russia - and the rumours are still flourishing.

If the EU adopts the sanctions, it is expected that the EU will be short of 500,000 tonnes of aluminium per year. To compensate, European countries will likely import more aluminium from the Middle East, where freight, packaging and taxes are more expensive.

Overall, this means that sanctions against Russia will likely lead to both higher and more volatile aluminium prices.

Stainless Steel

Since August, the EU has been investigating whether stainless steel products from Taiwan, Turkey and Vietnam were circumventing sanctions against Indonesia.

The investigation focussed on whether the import patterns from these countries had changed following the sanctions against Indonesia in a way that could indicate that Indonesian material was being exported to the EU via processing in the three countries.

The preliminary results of the investigation point to circumvention of the sanctions and therefore importers from Taiwan, Vietnam and Turkey will now be subject to an additional anti-dumping duty (Taiwan and Vietnam) and a countervailing duty (Taiwan, Vietnam and Turkey).

Sheets and plates

As we have described in recent months, price increases on sheets and plates are necessary. The mills need higher base prices if production is to be viable.

We have now seen the beginnings of an upward movement in February and March. But it is not coming from the mills as such; strikes in Spain and Finland have helped push the prices up.

The strike in Spain in particular is larger than expected. The strike in Finland can affect the lead time on sheets and plates.

Bars

Just like last month, bars are stable.

Nickel

The nickel price is still fairly low. But it has climbed to around 18,000 USD/t after having been as low as 15,500 USD/t in January and February.

As a result, the alloy surcharge on 4301/4307 and 4404 will increase in April. On plates the increase will be 3-5% and on bars the increase on these alloys is 5-6%.

The expectation is that the nickel price will remain in this range for some time.