In his presentation at the SteelOrbis Fall '10 Conference & 63rd IREPAS Meeting held in Madrid on October 3-5, Ved Prakash from Gemini Corporation NV said that containerized scrap exports is the rising trend in the scrap trade, with India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam being the favourite destinations for this new trade.
Assessing Turkey's key role in the world scrap market, Ved Prakash said that Turkey, rather than being a country dependent on scrap, is the driver of the world scrap market instead. He went on to point out that, while the US, Romania and the Netherlands remained the top scrap suppliers to Turkey in the January-July period of this year, the UK replaced Russia, which saw increased scrap demand in its local market, as its fourth largest scrap supplier.
Mr. Prakash indicated that containerized scrap exports from the US reached two million metric tons in the first seven months of this year, while its scrap exports in break bulk shipping to the main scrap importing countries, i.e., Turkey, South Korea and China, totaled 1.97 million mt, 1.65 million mt and 1.20 million mt respectively in the same period. However, the Gemini Corporation official underlined that these key importers have almost a negligible share in the booming container scrap trade, mainly due to the expensive handling costs of containers in these countries.
Mr. Prakash also underlined the increasing appetite for scrap in Asia, particularly in China and India, explaining that some governments in the region, such as China, are encouraging steel production based on scrap consumption, announcing long-term tax benefit programs for the investments directed towards this production type, with the Chinese government supporting the usage of renewable raw material resources.