Posted on 24 Sep 2024
Approaching October trading, expectations for scrap prices in the US domestic market are seen to have shifted more to a sideways trend after the decrease seen in Turkish scrap values last week.
Although some market participants were expecting to see an increase for certain grades, this has now changed after US suppliers failed to find targeted prices in Turkey, the largest export destination.
“There is no more export support and we have to keep in mind that maintenance outages will continue in October,” says one Turkish mill source.
A scrap dealer tells Kallanish: “Flow [of scrap] is extremely weak, even this month. Considering we are approaching winter, this should impact pricing, if not in October, in November at the latest.”
Hot rolled coil prices in the US domestic market meanwhile increased further last week. In addition, the US Fed’s interest rate cut brought some optimism to the US steel market. However, its real impact is not expected to be seen before the presidential elections in November.
For US West Coast business, the Taiwanese scrap market failed to record improvement last week, with a few containerised US-origin HMS 1&2 80:20 bookings done at $310-315/t cfr Taiwan versus initial offers at $320/t cfr.
On the East Coast, although US-origin suppliers insisted on their offers at $375/t cfr Turkey, they failed to even attain the previous week’s levels of $370/t. A single US-origin deal was heard in the second half of last week at $367/t cfr for HMS 1&2 80:20. However, Turkish mills' finished steel price hikes on Monday fuelled scrap suppliers' expectations of higher prices.
Source:Kallanish
