Numerous long steel product suppliers serving the UK market have announced price increases in the last few days.
Domestic mill British Steel upped its sections and wire rod prices GBP50/mt Thursday for the UK effective January 1, according to a notice.
The company cited rising demand, utilization and increasing raw materials costs.
ArcelorMittal also increased prices GBP55/mt ($73/mt) for the UK, with immediate effect, it told customers.
A trader said there was "confidence the increases will go through" on rising raw material costs. He cited Turkish scrap prices rising 20% as well as premium low volatile coking coal rising from circa $180/mt FOB Australia in the last month or so to over $236/mt FOB Friday.
In a note to customers, Parker Steel also alluded to two producers increasing prices GBP50/mt with immediate effect.
As of December 1 medium sections in Europe were priced at Eur593/mt ($699/mt) delivered.
It cited rising raw material costs and freight rates reaching their highest level in three years.
"We anticipate that further price increases will be inevitable if the commodity prices continue to rise, and currently there is no sign that prices will be decreasing in the short-to-medium term," Parker said.
The company said it was well stocked and customers should place orders quickly to avoid outsell prices rising.
Leading European merchant bar producer Beltrame also informed UK customers it would be raising prices GBP30/mt with immediate effect, and sources said domestic producers would likely follow suit.
While the upstream looked bullish, outsell prices remained weak.
A trader said stockholders had been caught out by this year's price rises as they did not seem the upturn as sustainable, so had regularly sold below replacement costs.
"But everybody has to pay these increases and the outsell price cannot stay where it is. I expect they will take a quantum leap when we come back in the New Year," he said.
In the sections market outsell prices were not helped by British Steel recovering from its blast furnace outage quicker than the market had expected.
People had expected its furnace to be down until early-September, but it came back in mid-August, meaning the contingency import material they booked was arriving just as domestic deliveries were normalizing.
