Taiwan's stainless steel prices likely to rise for Feb
The international nickel price had remained at a high point between US$17,000 and US$18,000 since January. The market participants expected that Taiwan's upstream stainless steel mills would quote a new price for February, which likely to follow the increase as that in January.
Some market participants considered that the average price of nickel in January was about US$1,000 higher than the price in December, which definitely pushed the prices of pure nickel and nickel pig iron to rise.
In addition, the big shortage of ferrochromium had caused a large increase in costs of the upstream stainless steel mills and it was no wonder that there was a high possibility of a price increase in February.
However, some downstream marketers hoped that the upstream steel mills could consider the ability of the downstream buyers when they quoted prices. With the coming Chinese New Year in February, the workload would probably be reduced and affected.
