Metal Bulletin reviews the major stories affecting the steel market over the past week.

The EU market for finished long steel products has been looking up recently amid expectations that Algerian buyers will return to active trading.

The Wuhan coronavirus will likely influence fundamentals in China’s steel market and Chinese export trends in the near future, sources told Fastmarkets this week.

The Turkish long steel export market has remained sluggish because of the uncertainty created by the Section 232 tariffs imposed by the United States, and prices have started to fall, sources said on Thursday March 22.

The new round of sanctions imposed by the United States on November 5 is expected to cut Iranian steel exports further, gradually leading to lower Iranian steel output, market sources believe.

Liepajas Metalurgs plans to resume production at the end November, a spokeswoman for the Latvian mill’s new owner, Ukrainian KVV Group, told Steel First on Friday October 3.

Global steel billet prices continued to climb this week on strong demand from buyers, who are hoping to secure volumes before prices move up further.

Severstal, Russia’s second-largest steelmaker, has sold 5,000 tonnes of billet to Saudi Arabia, two sources have told Steel First.

In the face of increasingly volatile markets in Asia, it is becoming more and more crucial for participants to engage in hedging to cut their risks of incurring losses, industry sources told Metal Bulletin.

Global scrap prices have declined in key regions from the levels they showed a week ago, with the weakening Turkish lira damping sentiment in what is the world’s largest scrap import market.