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New Delhi, July 8 Prices of steel ingots have come down by around Rs 2,000 a tonne during the past one week. This is after prices increased steadily in the preceding week on anticipation that there could be an official price hike by the major producers, market sources said.

But with the major producers holding prices steady in July, the anticipatory price rise melted off and came down to the preceding week’s level in the wholesale spot markets across the country.

Though steel ingots are not sold by the major producers, its prices are decided by benchmarking on the prices of blooms sold by big steel producers. Ingots are used for manufacturing construction steel such as bars, sarias, etc.

According to an official in a major TMT bar producer, though the prices at which the company purchased ingots and billets have come down during the last one week, it is getting only partially reflected in prices of bars and other downstream products because the market is highly fragmented.

There are several hundred producers offering prices with differences of up to Rs 4,000-6,000 a tonne though quality also varies widely. So the actual reduction in prices of product made by using ingots as raw materials would not come down by the equivalent amount, he said.

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