Asian buyers are pressurizing Iranian steel mills and traders to sell their steel more cheaply due to the latest round of US sanctions, but have not stopped making purchases, an Iran-based steel and mining industry analyst told S&P Global Platts Wednesday. Buyers from locations including Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and, to a lesser extent, Singapore, have been negotiating prices with Iranian sellers at around 5-10% below recent levels, taking advantage of the Iranians’ inability to carry out sales at market prices under the revamped scenario, said Keyvan Jafari Tehrani. “Even two days after the new sanctions were imposed, I received new inquiries for billet and other steel products including, surprisingly, hot rolled coil from Mobarakeh Steel,” Tehrani said in an interview. “The inquiries came even from a very reputable trading house in the Middle East which, even understanding well about the new sanctions said ‘no problem, we’ll take care of that’,” the analyst said. “Sanctions have a side-effect on price,” he said. The US government imposed a new round of sanctions on Iranian steel, metals and minerals exports January 10 in response to an Iranian missile attack last week on US bases in Iraq. This followed the imposition of secondary sanctions on Iranian mineral products and steel in 2018 and 2019. Prices of Iranian products have typically dropped following the advent of further sanctions, but trade with Iran has continued, various trading sources say. The latest round of sanctions – more sweeping in terms of steel and metal production and trading than the previous ones – is nonetheless worrying, according to Tehrani, as private sector traders including Panchel Beijing Trading and Khalagh Tadbir Pars Co. have this time around found themselves subject to US sanctions, in addition to Iranian state-owned entities. Private sector traders in Iran typically export steel and iron ore products purchased from state-owned companies. The traders listed in the most recent sanctions list export steel slabs from major steelmaker Esco and import graphite electrodes, the analyst said. Value-added exports Iran’s steel sector will need to shift its focus more to exports of finished steel-containing and value-added steel products in order to cope with the new sanctions, said Amir Hossein Kaveh, secretary of the Iranian syndicate of steel pipe and profile manufacturers. “A paradigm shift is required,” Kaveh said in an interview. Recently, Iran has exported substantial volumes of raw materials such as iron ore, which have been included in the recent sanctions, and semi-finished steel goods. “We should change our strategy in the exporting domain by replacing raw materials exports with final products and pursue this change as a strategy,” Kaveh said. “Thousands of metal goods are made that cannot be sanctioned.” The Iranian downstream pipes and profiles sector has the capacity to convert 18 million mt/year of steel sheet, much higher than the production of steel coil nationwide, which is around 6 million to 7 million mt/year, he said.
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