Hot-rolled coil inventories expand on week

SHANGHAI, Jan 11 (SMM) – Hot-rolled coil (HRC) stocks across social warehouses and steelmakers in China grew 1.8% from a week ago and came in at 2.88 million mt as of Thursday January 10, SMM data showed.

With three weeks before the week-long Chinese New Year (CNY) break, HRC inventories stood 0.9% lower than the lunar period last year.

For the same period, HRC social stocks saw a larger increase of 3% and stood at 1.9 million mt, after it gained 0.8% in the previous week. Social inventories as of January 10 stood 2.5% lower than in the same period before CNY last year.

HRC stocks across steelmakers dipped 0.4% to 974,400 mt, up 2.3% year on year.