Posted on 05 Aug 2024
Scrap prices in Turkey remained under strong pressure last week as buyers showed no interest in scrap offers amid weak steel sales, lower-priced billet bookings and mills’ almost zero margins.
Turkish mills, which have booked almost 700,000 tonnes of imported billet since mid-June, have not yet returned to the scrap market. Apart from a deal from France at $386/tonne cfr for HMS 1&2 80:20 in the first half of last week, no deep-sea bookings were heard in the market.
Some EU-origin suppliers, offering HMS 1&2 80:20 at $383/t cfr on Friday, failed to find buyers at this level. Some Baltic and US suppliers sought $390/t cfr for premium HMS 1&2 80:20.
A supplier tells Kallanish: “At these prices, neither US nor EU sellers can find buyers. In the best-case scenario, the US and Baltic suppliers can achieve $386-387/t cfr and $384-385/t cfr respectively if they can find buyers today.”
Turkish producers are seen to have decreased their price targets for EU-origin HMS 1&2 80:20 to below $380/t cfr, meanwhile. The euro, which has been highly volatile recently, increased to $1.088 on Friday, from $1.078 a day earlier, thereby challenging European suppliers.
A mill says: “Although we tried to explain the reality to scrap suppliers, which is that billet prices have decreased recently, they refused to accept that this would impact scrap prices. Now, they are facing the reality and have started decreasing prices.”
Imported billet prices have decreased to as low as $485/t cfr Turkey in recent bookings, although $480/t was also rumoured.
“Not so long ago, as recently as Monday, they were saying that scrap prices would skyrocket,” another mill said on Friday.
“On the other hand, a supply shortage is our reality,” says a scrap supplier bemoaning weak material inflow into docks.
Turkish producers, willing to fulfil their missing August-shipment requirements from the short-sea market, concluded some short-sea bookings at lower prices last week. Although Romania-origin bookings reached $375-377/t cfr Turkey in the previous week, bookings from Bulgaria, Romania, the Adriatic and Italy were concluded at $371/t, $373/t, $375/t and $379/t cfr respectively last week.
Turkey’s September-shipment scrap purchases remain largely missing.
The Kallanish daily assessment for premium HMS 1&2 80:20 cfr Turkey decreased by $1.5/t to $386.5/t on Friday.
Source:Kallanish
