dd 7-9-2022

Due to the great unrest in the world, especially due to the Ukraine crisis, Taiwan and China's zero-covid policy, there has also been unrest in the metal market. There is a lot of uncertainty in the field of (energy) prices, availability of raw materials and delivery times. Freight traffic between Europe, North America and Asia is also still disrupted on a large scale. On March 8, London Metal Exchange even the trade in nickel has been temporarily suspended. Producers and suppliers are therefore confronted with extreme price fluctuations and increasing delivery times.

Suppliers and users have started hoarding to cover expected material needs and/or ongoing projects.

Partly due to the decreased demand in the past (holiday) months, the basic prices are currently unrealistically low. As soon as the demand picks up again and the energy costs rise even further, the expectation is that the prices will rise considerably again. This also depends greatly on what the manufacturers are going to do in the coming period. At the moment they are not earning anything, the costs are only increasing and they are often struggling with excessive stocks.

The question now is whether manufacturers will scale up production restrictions or even shut down production lines.

We expect to be able to provide more information about this in September/October.

Due to ongoing developments and strong price fluctuations, we are unfortunately also forced to make regular price changes.

Our quotes therefore have a limited validity period. We ask for your understanding.