Transport restrictions among ports and provinces are restricting Chinese steelmakers from shipping steel and steel feedstocks.
Government officials have implemented stringent controls in Hubei, eastern China’s Zhejiang province and neighboring areas to control the spread of the coronavirus. Although Beijing has urged businesses to restart, the locals have been slow to lift transport restrictions, preventing most steelmakers from delivering their products to customers and warehouses, freezing spot steel trade and pilling up the mills inventories. Some mills are running low on feedstocks.
Even though the ports were reopened in Northern China but the imports and exports faced delays due to a shortage of drivers which reduced truck availability thereby raising the logistic cost.
08Steel mills were also unable to obtain domestic coking coal from neighboring provinces due to the transport blockages and strict inter-province checks, which resulted in frenzied purchases of Australian coking coal on a portside basis.
