Posted on 12 Dec 2025
Turkish long steel mills continue to face weak demand in both export and domestic markets, keeping prices under pressure, notes Kallanish.
Mills’ official export offers on Thursday were at $565-575/tonne fob Türkiye actual weight for rebar and $570-580/t fob for mesh-quality wire rod, unchanged from last week.
The higher end is being quoted mostly by Marmara mills, while western and southern mills remain at the lower end. Even the low end remains unworkable for buyers in major regions, such as the EU and the Balkans.
Türkiye’s offer levels are facing resistance in export markets amid lower quotes from Egyptian producers, while Algerian availability is limited as producers prioritise their domestic market.
While export demand has failed to recover, Turkish domestic demand, which had been the main driver of prices since mid-November, has also disappeared since last week. This has forced mills to offer discounts on longs prices and pressure scrap values.
Recent sales remain confined to small, containerised lots.
A single notable sale was reported this week, by a Marmara mill to Peru at around $575/t fob for 20,000 tonnes. However, as the cargo comprises specific sizes, grades and packaging, the actual transaction price is lower.
Sales to Africa, northern Cyprus and Georgia continue but remain low in volume, even at below 1,000 tonnes per cargo, while no sales were reported this week in Palestine or Yemen.
In the domestic market, demand showed no improvement on Thursday. Mills cut official offers further to $557-590/t ex-works, with discounts increasingly available, especially near the top of the range. Even the Turkish Central Bank’s 150 base points rate cut failed to lend support as demand weakened further day-on-day. The size-related shortages that had supported the market for a while now appear to have disappeared.
In the scrap market, mills now deem $370/t cfr Türkiye levels unworkable and see $365-367/t cfr as the realistic ceiling. Meanwhile, the sharp drop in Chinese rebar and hot rolled coil futures on Thursday has renewed Turkish mills’ interest in lower-priced imported billet as a longer-term substitute for scrap.
Source:Kallanish
