Turkey has continued buying deep sea scrap with a price increase and new sales have been revealed to the market, this time from the Baltic region and Europe. Moreover, sentiments have improved further and more scrap market players assume there is potential for prices to go up further.
According to sources, an ex-Finland scrap cargo for December shipment has recently been sold to a Turkish Marmara region-based mill. The lot includes 9,500 mt of HMS I/II 80:20 at $351/mt CFR, 13,000 mt of shredded at $371/mt CFR and 2,000 mt of busheling scrap at $371/mt CFR.
Previously, after an ex-UK sale at $344/mt CFR, ex-Baltic scrap was evaluated at $345-350/mt CFR, and so this new sale has somewhat exceeded expectations. In addition, some sources report there is decent demand from Turkish mills for scrap, but there seems to be a lack of supply in the market.
In addition, an ex-Belgium scrap sale deal has been concluded at an average price of $354/mt CFR for 30,000 mt of HMS I/II 80:20, 5,000 mt of HMS I and P&S and 5,000 mt of shredded scrap. The estimated price for HMS I/II 80:20 is at around $349/mt CFR, $5/mt, up from the previous European scrap sale. The cargo will be shipped in December and it is generally estimated that Turkey requires six to seven scrap cargoes for the month in question.
In this situation, the expectation for the ex-US scrap has settled at $350-355/mt CFR for now, but some market players foresee this level will be exceeded in the coming deals.
In the short sea segment, another small HMS I/II 80:20 scrap cargo has been sold to Turkey at $322/mt CFR Izmir following the deals closed earlier at $325/mt CFR, while Bulgaria has traded a small lot of the same grade at $325/mt CFR to the northern part of Turkey. Some sellers, however, are quite confident that $330/mt CFR and slightly above should be the workable level. In fact, some sources have reported that this level has already been accepted for Bulgarian origin material, but the details were not be disclosed by the time of publication. “The demand coming from mills has increased from yesterday, but there are still not many offers in the market. Deep sea offers are generally for January shipment and not December,” a trader told SteelOrbis.
