Scrap price increase hopes downsized in local Italian market

During the Ecomondo fair held in Rimini on November 4-7, 2025, SteelOrbis collected various opinions from players in the Italian scrap market. Scrap suppliers initially showed some slight enthusiasm for higher prices, which was immediately dampened by mills, which are instead determined to maintain unchanged prices in future contracts.

The upward trend in import scrap prices from Turkey and the fact that local scrap prices in Italy bottomed out in October initially gave Italian market players hope for a recovery in November. However, the cautious and potentially bearish stance of other European scrap markets such as Austria and Germany, as well as the reduction in volumes purchased by a major Italian player after the recent accident at its plant, have made it clear that the price trend in the next deals will remain essentially unchanged.

“The market conditions are not tending towards a price decline, but neither to a price increase” a source at an Italian mill said. "I’m afraid that traders' hopes of an uptick will not materialize," a second source at another producer commented.

On the other side, scrap suppliers seem to be aware that, despite the struggles in finding volumes of some scrap categories (especially higher grades), scrap demand from buyers is not enough to allow significant increases in scrap prices in Italy. "There have been some upward adjustments, but they were starting from really low levels," a market source reported.

In the meantime, however, market players involved in scrap collection have continued to report low scrap generation, especially from the manufacturing and automotive industrial sectors. Finally, uncertainty for the outlook for next year continues to be observed.

In light of this, scrap prices in the local market in Italy have remained substantially unchanged compared to last week.

Prices include delivery and exclude VAT.