As Turkey’s appetite for deep sea scrap for September shipment remains weak, the deals closed in the first half of August have all indicated significant prices declines. A new deal disclosed today, August 13, is not an exception.
An ex-Netherlands booking done by a producer in Izmir was signed for 25,000 mt of HMS I/II 80:20 scrap at $368.5/mt CFR and 10,000 mt of bonus grade scrap at $390.5/mt CFR. This level is $3/mt lower than the previous indicative level of $370-373/mt CFR reported by SteelOrbis in the absence of any transactions. There is a rumour about the same supplier selling some scrap to Egypt last week at around $370-375/mt CFR.
Meanwhile, the local US scrap market has settled sideways during the August buy-cycle. The short-lived optimism in the US had disappeared by the end of July after negative economic signals and given the slow finished steel demand in the country. Scrap collection prices in the EU are at around €305-310/mt DAP, with several market players being out of the market due to holidays. Import billet prices have retained their importance for Turkey, with the Chinese billet market still on a downward trend. This situation in not only impacting the Asian scrap market, but also the cheaper offers received from ASEAN countries are impacting Turkey’s import scrap market, with the tradable level for billet being at $475-490/mt CFR for Chinese and Indonesian origins. Not much has changed in the local Turkish rebar market, but prices have responded to lower scrap prices, with a $5/mt drop on the upper end. SteelOrbis believes that import scrap prices may remain soft in the coming period unless the demand from Turkish producers recovers.
