Turkish Steel Exporters Association president Namık Ekinci said yesterday, October 31, that steel producers in Turkey's Iskenderun region - a major hub for the Turkish steel industry - support the project which has been mooted for the establishment of a joint venture company which will conduct import scrap purchases acting as a pool for shareholding steelmaker companies.
The project has being discussed for a while in Turkey, the largest scrap importer in the world, in order to strenghten Turkish mills' pricing power in scrap purchases.
According to the data provided by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), Turkey's scrap imports totaled 14.65 million in the first nine months this year, decreasing by 13.07 percent year on year, while the decrease was mostly due to the five percent drop in Turkey's steel production and higher domestic scrap supplies.