Few US scrap cargos have been booked by customers in Turkey and the Far East amid a strong US dollar and depressed steel markets overseas. The euro has weakened relative to the US dollar in recent weeks, so Turkish producers are avoiding buying scrap from the US at the moment, and are instead looking to secure their scrap needs through Europe instead. European HMS I/II offers to Turkey have been about $10/mt less than current bulk US offers, which are unchanged in the last couple weeks at $440/mt CFR, with offer prices for shredded about $5-$10/mt higher. With US domestic scrap prices trending down and soft steel prices in Turkey, SteelOrbis sources anticipate that unless steel demand in Turkey picks up, export scrap prices from the US are bound to come down.
Container scrap activity from the US East Coast to India has also been extremely slow due to increases in container rates a couple weeks ago. On the US West Coast, after little-to-no container scrap exports were booked to Taiwan in early May, the latest offer prices have come down to about $430/mt CFR. Steel demand in Taiwan and China is extremely sluggish at the moment--export prices from China and Taiwan for coated flat steel products to the US dropped by $10-$20/mt in the last week--and Taiwanese mills don't believe US export prices have bottomed yet, according to export sources on the West Coast. But while there still appears to be some room for prices to fall, prices may soon be close to a bottom.