Turkish scrap market full throttle

In the last one week, many scrap bookings, especially “deep sea” cargoes have been reported in Turkish scrap market. In our analysis titled “Scrap markets active” last week, we reported that Turkish mills started their scrap purchases for July shipments; however, we also reported that we expected them to enter a dense purchasing period due to their July shipment requirements. Actually, the consecutive scrap bookings in scrap market, which started to gain momentum fairly as of last Wednesday, confirmed our expectations. We heard that more than 10 bookings for scrap ex-Europe, ex-US, and ex-Baltic Sea, which we call deep sea scrap, have been concluded. The price levels in these bookings were at around $288-290/mt CFR Turkish ports for HMS I/II 80:20, at around $280-283/mt CFR Turkish ports for HMS I/II 60:40, at around $298-299/mt CFR Turkish ports for shredded scrap and at around $292-294/mt CFR Turkish ports for A3 grade scrap, 30 percent of which is bonus grade. Bookings for A3 grade scrap ex-Black Sea were concluded at around $288-290/mt CFR Turkish ports. Turkish mills, which were pleased with the strong market situation especially in US and the UAE markets in terms of product prices for both local and export markets, are content with their scrap bookings although higher compared to previous weeks. We expect a few more scrap bookings for July shipments after this week; however, we do not expect them to be more than last week. Taking last week's purchases concluded into account, it is forecasted that current rate of Euro/US Dollar exchange will keep the scrap price levels unchanged for awhile if product prices keep their current levels and no sharp ups and downs are observed.