The latest news and price moves to start the Asian day on Friday June 22.

China’s daily crude steel production extended its rebound in mid-October and reached 1.999 million tonnes, a five-month high.

The offtake agreement that sees Glencore market the vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) produced by Largo Resources in Brazil will not be renewed when it expires on April 30, 2020, the latter said late on Tuesday August 20.

The prices paid for steel scrap by mills in Turkey and Asia have moved up over the week ending Friday July 17, against a backdrop of stronger Chinese prices for iron ore and steel.

If US President Donald Trump approves Section 232 recommendations made by the country's Commerce Department, it could threaten the European steel market with export reduction and the growth of redirected import flows, sources told Metal Bulletin.

Editor Vera Blei looks at the main news covered by Steel First over the past week.

Steel billet prices in most global markets either held steady or continued to weaken during the week from Monday April 23 to Friday April 27 after global trading activity ebbed away amid soft demand.

The world’s billet markets became uncertain last week, with sentiment starting to weaken amid higher availability of China-origin material and volatility in the East Asian country’s domestic prices.

Sabic Hadeed expects local steel consumption to increase gradually over the next 10 years thanks to stronger demand from the private sector and not only via government spending or the oil sector, the state-owned Saudi Arabian steel producer said at Fastmarkets’ Middle East Iron and Steel conference in Dubai last week.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the second and third largest steel consuming countries in the Middle East, have suffered mostly indirectly from the impact of Section 232, executives said during a panel at the Middle East Iron & Steel Conference in Dubai on December 10-12.