Price trend
According to the price monitoring of SunSirs, stainless steel continued to decline slightly this week. As of April 7th, the daily average price of spot 304/2B stainless steel flat plates 1.0 * 1219 * 2438 (with a tolerance of 0.91) was 13,928.57 RMB/ton, a decrease of 1.91% from the price of 14,200 RMB/ton at the beginning of the week and a year-on-year decrease of 25.77%.
According to the price difference analysis tool of SunSirs, the price trends of nickel and stainless steel were basically consistent. Recently, nickel prices had stopped falling and rebounded, while stainless steel prices had been continuously falling.
Analysis review
This week's total stainless steel inventory was 1.245273 million tons, a decrease of 2.47% compared to last week, with both cold rolled and hot rolled inventories falling.
The production of 300 series stainless steel crude steel from 41 domestic stainless steel factories in March was 1.3732 million tons, a decrease of 109,900 tons compared to the previous month, a decrease of 7.41%, and a year-on-year decrease of 10.35%. The production in April is expected to reach 1.4965 million tons, an increase of 8.98% month on month and 1.32% year-on-year. Although stainless steel prices continue to decline at present, due to the significant decrease in raw material prices, leading stainless steel factories still have profits, and the reduction in production in March was not widespread. In April, the expected production schedule of the steel plant is still expected to increase, with the 300 series being the main production. However, due to the current weak fundamentals of stainless steel, actual production in April may not be as expected, but there is still a certain level of release on the overall supply side of stainless steel. Downstream demand has not been significantly repaired.
Market outlook
It is expected that the price of stainless steel will remain weaker in the short term, and steel mills will reduce production in the medium term.
