At the recent BIR (Bureau of International Recycling) Ferrous Division meeting held in New Delhi, board member Tom Bird of UK-based Liberty Steel stated that, overall, scrap demand is still healthy and volatility is now expected to be lower than in previous months. “We have seen a softening over recent weeks but it is felt that we have reached the bottom and should see a more balanced market for the remainder of 2017,” he said.
Divisional president William Schmiedel of Sims Management Global Trade agreed that, in terms of ferrous scrap pricing, “We have experienced quite a volatile marketplace, with traded cargoes at levels close to US$ 240/mt all the way up to US$ 360-370/mt”. He added, “This volatility is typical in a market in the recovery stage, with fixing levels finding new highs then backing off, but always only to a level that exceeded the previous bottom.”
Despite a strong scrap market for most of the year, India has been priced out of the international marketplace and its imports are expected to be around 40 percent lower than last year, it was noted by Mr. Bird. “Overall steel demand has been sluggish,” he said.
In the first half of 2017, the EU-28 had remained the world’s leading steel scrap exporter following an increase in its overseas shipments of 15.8 percent to 9.961 million mt, with the four biggest buyers being Turkey (+19.5 percent to 5.975 million mt), Pakistan (-6.4 percent to 0.718 million mt), the US (+31.5 percent to 0.651 million mt) and Egypt (+118.5 percent to 0.614 million mt).
The world’s second-largest steel scrap importer in 2016 with 6.4 million mt, India is currently the third-largest steel producer globally and will soon take over the second position from Japan, according to guest speaker R. R. Ganesh, director of sourcing at Jindal Stainless, India’s largest stainless steel manufacturing group.