Bearish outlook on the future developments in the global steel and raw materials market, prevailing among most of market insiders has continued to weigh on the scrap prices in China. Specifically, both local and import scrap prices in China have expectedly fallen this week, however Chinese steelmakers have continued to prefer booking the latter. In particular, this week HS scrap from Japan is said to be possible to be purchased at $560-570/mt CFR, down $20-30/mt from previous widespread offers. Meanwhile, the customers are seeking to book import scrap not higher than $520/mt CFR.
Concurrently, the continued production restrictions in China have continued to drag down local scrap prices. At the same time, lower scrap supply caused by Covid-19 related reasons has continued to provide a certain support to the local scrap sellers, offsetting a bigger decline in prices.
Accordingly, average domestic HMS scrap prices in China are at RMB 3,681/mt ($568/mt) ex-warehouse, down RMB 24/mt compared to August 18, according to SteelOrbis’ information.
Average scrap prices in China’s main markets are presented in the following table.
|
Product name |
Specification |
Origin |
Price |
Price |
Weekly change |
Weekly change |
|
HMS |
> 6 mm |
Tianjin |
3,785 |
584.0 |
-15 |
-2.7 |
|
Liupanshui, Guizhou |
3,695 |
570.1 |
-35 |
-5.8 |
||
|
Nanchang, Jiangxi |
3,680 |
567.8 |
-20 |
-3.4 |
||
|
Handan, Hebei |
3,890 |
600.2 |
0 |
-0.4 |
||
|
Anyang, Henan |
3,590 |
553.9 |
-30 |
-5.0 |
||
|
Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu |
3,650 |
563.2 |
-30 |
-5.0 |
||
|
Jinan, Shandong |
3,475 |
536.2 |
-40 |
-6.5 |
||
|
Average |
3,681 |
567.9 |
-24 |
-4.1 |
$1 = RMB 6.4728