According to the data provided by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), in April this year Turkey's steel scrap imports increased 21.5 percent compared to the previous month, reaching the highest monthly volume recorded since October 2012. However, the country's scrap imports fell 8.75 percent compared to April 2012, amounting to 1.9 million metric tons.
According to the data released by TUIK, Turkey's scrap import value was $747 million in April, up 20.9 percent compared to March this year and down 18.7 percent year on year. In April this year, the average price of Turkey's steel scrap imports stood at $397/mt, falling approximately $2/mt compared to the previous month and down strongly compared to the average of $445/mt recorded in the same month of 2012.
In April of the current year, Turkey imported 1 million mt of steel scrap from the EU, increasing 57 percent compared to the previous month but down 8.5 percent year on year, it imported 582,345 mt of scrap from North America, falling 9.6 percent year on year and down nine percent compared to March, while scrap imports from the CIS totaled 168,334 mt, decreasing by 5.85 percent year on year and down slightly on month-on-month basis.
In the first four months of the year, Turkey's steel scrap imports amounted to 6.2 million mt, decreasing 15.9 percent compared to the same period of the previous year, with a value of $2.5 billion, down 25.1 percent year on year.
Turkey's main scrap sources on country basis in the first four months of this year are presented in the chart below:
Turkey's top 10 steel scrap import sources in January-April 2013 are as follows:
Country | Volume (mt) | |||
Jan-Apr 2013 | Jan-Apr 2012 | April 2013 | March 2013 | |
US | 1,969,396 | 1,884,458 | 513,226 | 557,181 |
UK | 814,332 | 783,537 | 220,307 | 184,769 |
Romania | 758,466 | 551,566 | 275,411 | 170,884 |
Russia | 459,561 | 554,531 | 129,183 | 151,025 |
Belgium | 279,055 | 456,789 | 53,841 | 66,609 |
Bulgaria | 249,263 | 243,438 | 83,428 | 66,807 |
Netherlands | 240,975 | 799,479 | 127,268 | - |
Canada | 223,453 | 126,841 | 69,119 | 82,862 |
Denmark | 168,980 | 158,316 | 56,231 | 40,810 |
Lebanon | 146,584 | 132,016 | 50,508 | 39,077 |
TOTAL | 6,224,676 | 7,399,874 | 1,881,941 | 1,549,025 |