Although the current stainless steel prices are very high, Asian stainless steelmakers are expecting to raise their prices further as high nickel prices show no signs of forthcoming weakness.

According to the LME nickel prices this month, the average price is probably staying around US$50,000 per ton in April.

In that case, the stainless mills is likely to rise they price by more than US$300 per ton based on April prices.

Users fed up with the high stainless steel prices, but have to buy for their urgent needs, despite their cost was increased by about US$600 per ton compared with one week ago.

Therefore, more and more users are trying to use 200 and 400 series materials with lower nickel content to substitute 304 materials.