BEIJING, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) – China's steel market is likely to usher in a long-overdue peak season following the price hike in coke, the raw material for steel making, the Xinhua-run Shanghai Securities News reported on Tuesday.
According to the report, some leading coking enterprises in China has decided to raise their coke prices by 50 yuan/tonne.
Industry insiders predicted that a growing number of coking enterprises across the country will follow the pace of price adjustment, which will set off the seventh round of coke price boom.
Recently, steel mills saw their profit margins increase significantly, which to some extent boosted the increase of coke prices, Qiu Yuecheng, researcher with Everbright Futures Research Institute.
In the first three quarter of this year, China's steel output posted steady growth amid increasing market demand.
According to the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA), crude steel output totaled 748 million tonnes in the first nine months, up 8.4 percent year on year.
(Edited by Yang Yifan with Xinhua Silk Road, yangyifan@xinhua.org)
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