Industry Odisha Bureau, Sep 08: India’s steel prices look set to climb further. Rising coking coal costs are driving the increase. Demand is also recovering across key sectors. Infrastructure, construction and automobile activity are strengthening post-monsoon.
Yet this upward momentum faces a natural ceiling. Growing imports, particularly from China, threaten mill pricing power. That dynamic will likely shape the coming weeks.
Recent price data tells a two-part story. Hot-rolled coil prices actually fell between June and July. The decline measured ₹280 per tonne during that period. Government figures confirmed this initial downward movement.
That trend reversed sharply soon afterward. Between August and early September, HRC prices jumped ₹4,000 per tonne. BigMint, a commodities consultancy, called this a four-year high.
Industry voices expect the increases to continue. Enlight Metals director Vedant Goel foresees another ₹3,500 per tonne rise. He described this as an expectation, not a certainty.
The cost pressure driving these increases traces back to coking coal. This input carries substantial weight in steelmaking costs. CRU’s Shankhadeep Mukherjee said mills are now passing costs forward. Higher input prices are translating into higher output prices.
Supply constraints reinforced this price recovery too. Major mills undertook planned maintenance shutdowns recently. Spot market availability tightened as a result. Distributor inventories also remained lean throughout this period, BigMint said.
A senior mill executive, speaking anonymously, outlined further support factors. Post-monsoon restocking activity is expected to continue. Festive-season demand and ongoing project work add momentum. Elevated coking coal costs round out this list of drivers.
For steelmakers, the upside is clear. Coking coal costs have squeezed margins in recent months. Higher selling prices could help mills recover some ground.
Downstream buyers face the opposite pressure entirely. Construction, infrastructure and automotive firms now confront steeper input costs. This lands just as their own demand cycles improve.
Imports remain the strongest check on this pricing trend. Government data shows India turned a net finished-steel importer. This status held specifically between April and July this year.
Finished steel imports climbed 36.6 per cent year-on-year during that window. China alone supplied 31 per cent of those imports. No other country came close to that share.
India has not been passive on trade measures. A safeguard duty on certain steel imports took effect last year. A separate anti-dumping investigation began in June. It targets HRC shipments from China, Japan and Russia.
Even so, import volumes have kept climbing. Fitch Ratings flagged this trend as a margin risk. The risk grows sharper if import competition intensifies further.
India remains the world’s second-largest crude steel producer, trailing only China. That scale offers little insulation from a market caught between rising costs at home and cheaper steel arriving from abroad.
