As has become customary over recent years, it appears as though the upward trend in ferro-chrome prices seen during the early months of the year has come to an end. Stainless steel mills in Europe and the USA have begun scaling back their raw material purchases in advance of summer maintenance outages. Stainless steel production typically drops by some 10-20% in both Europe and the USA in the summer, and so ferro-chrome demand has slowed. As such, we expect that the third quarter will see a weakening in ferro-chrome prices, both on the contract and spot markets.
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