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Focus: The price of nickel and repercussions on steel AISI 304

Let’s try to simply explain what are the reasons for the current pressure on AISI 304 (1.4301) stainless steel price.  Looking at the NICKEL 2016/today graph (Pic. 1), which shows prices in Euro/Ton at LME, it is clear that, running from the end of November 2015, prices moved within the following bands:
  • €/Ton 7.000/8.000 between November 2015 and June 2016
  • €/Ton 9.000/10.000 from July 2016 until November 2016
  • €/Ton 10.000/11.000 from the beginning of November 2016

nickel-2016-oggi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This dynamic of NICKEL led to the determination of the following EXTRA ALLOY values for AISI 304:

tabella-nickel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The January value is just estimated, of course, as it will be fixed on the average of Nickel purchasing until December 20, 2016. The extra-alloy value was affected by a greater increase in reference to the nickel increase, because it was also touched by the Chrome price, which is also sensible to the increase dynamic of just all raw materials, typical of the last period. By comparing the average of the extra-alloy of the first semester 2016 (€/Ton 867) with the expected price of the extra-alloy on January 2017 (€/Ton 1.310), the increase is about €/Ton 443. On top of that, one must add about €/Ton 100 for the increase of the base price by all European manufacturers (somebody increased by €/ton 130, too), thus taking the increase difference to 543 €/Ton.