Ferrochrome

摘要

Following consecutive price rises over the last six quarters, fourth quarter contract negotiations have resulted in a roll over in Europe at the third quarter contract price of 73 cents/lb on a delivered to customer basis. Reviewing spot market prices over the last three months as well as prices quoted this month it is clear that there was little impetus supporting a further rise in contract prices. In Europe, high carbon ferrochrome spot market prices remained steady throughout the third quarter, averaging around 70 cents/lb on a delivered to customer basis and anecdotal evidence suggests that prices quoted in October have not strengthened above this level. For the most part we believe that the rollover in contract prices in Europe reflects an increase in the availability of material in the western world markets. After increasing by more than 17 percent on a year-on-year basis in 2003, in the western world we estimate that ferrochrome output has increased by almost 9 percent in 2004, and will total almost 4.3m tonnes for the year as a whole. Indeed, while we expect that supply of primary chrome units has been the major contributing factor to the rollover in contract prices, it is clear that various other factors have also had some effect.