Paragraph entered by Atlantic migration, in order for SteelFirst articles to display correctly on Metal Bulletin.
Last month’s sales declined by 9.1% compared with those in September 2011, from 389,400 tonnes.
Inda members purchased 340,800 tonnes of flat steel products in August, down by 9.7% over the previous month, but an increase of 3.1% year-on-year.
Distributors’ inventories fell by 1.4% month-on-month in September, to 949,300 tonnes. This volume represents 2.7 months’-worth of sales, according to the association.
Shipments of heavy plate amounted to 36,900 tonnes in September, a decrease of 7% over the previous month, while distributors’ purchases dropped by 34%, to 38,000 tonnes.
Heavy plate inventory levels therefore increased to 4.9 months’-worth of sales.
Between January and September, flat sales from Inda members increased by only 0.7% year-on-year, to 3.25 million tonnes, while purchases totalled 3.2 million tonnes, up by 4.1%.
For October, Inda expects both flat steel sales and purchases to increase by about 12%.
The Brazilian flat steel industry has still to experience a challenging outlook in October, but inventory levels may decline on there being more working days, Barclays Capital analyst Leonardo Corrêa said in a report this week.
“The inventory-to-shipments ratio should decrease to below historical levels of 2.4 [months’-worth of sales],” he noted.
