By the end of the first decade of July Turkish companies merely stopped their scrap purchases, having provided themselves with raw material for several weeks. However some consumers kept dealing in the end of the last week, thus promoting further price growth. Turksh steelmakers according to some data purchased in June upto 1 M tons of steel scrap thus removed excess quantities from the market, so now there is no oversupply in Mediterranean and a lot of traders have no material for urgent deliveries.
All this contributed to the price of US HMS 1&2 (80:20) exceeded mthe mark of $340 per ton CFR Turkish port. European material of a little bit lower quality is quoted at $330-340 per ton CFR and Russian A3 material reached $ 325 per ton CFR and over. The same rise was in late-June – early-July in Eastern Asia. Restart of Chinese import after a long break furthered price climb for American scrap HMS1 to $360-375 per ton CFR China and for Japanese H2 to $350 per ton CFR.
However, in both regions the quotations have reached their peak already after which follows decrease. Turkish companies having made their stocks, came out the market, and are likely to come back not earlier than September. In China demand for scrap felt abruptly because of its distress price.
Korean companies have also merely stopped their scrap purchases. An excess of reinforced bar supply appeared in the country so the leading producers may cut their output in July-August, as experts say.
There is still good local demand for scrap in India but there are also sufficient stocks in the ports due to active purchases in May-June. It is supposed that Indian importers will try to beat the prices down in the next several weeks.
It is possible to guess that downwards movement of international scrap prices in the second half of July and August will be slow and moderate. The traders were ready for such scenario: it was clear already in May that demand for scrap to be insufficient till autumn. But there will be hardly anyone trying to bring demand to life by dumping efforts..