China’s steel futures rise on firm demand

Construction rebar and hot-rolled coil futures in China rose for the seventh straight session on Tuesday, boosted by firm consumption outlook even as data showed that the country reported a sharp drop in factory gate prices last month.

The October contract of rebar on the Shanghai Futures Exchange ended up 0.4% to 3,464 yuan ($488.42) a tonne.

Hot-rolled coil, used in the manufacturing sector, edged up 0.3% to 3,333 yuan per tonne.

The producer price index (PPI) fell 3.1% from a year earlier, China's National Bureau of Statistics said, compared with a 2.6% fall tipped by a Reuters poll and a 1.5% decline in March. The decline in April's PPI marks the sharpest drop on an annual basis in four years.

But on a monthly basis, prices of steel and nonferrous products dropped at slower paces, with the fall in ferrous metals smelting and processing prices narrowing by 0.3 percentage points.