DAILY STEEL SCRAP: Turkish mills continue July bookings; prices remain strong

A steel mill in the Iskenderun region booked a Baltic Sea cargo at $507.50 per tonne cfr on HMS 1&2 (80:20) basis – the cargo composition was not clear.

This compared with a previous bookings done on Tuesday at $506.50-507 per tonne cfr for Baltic Sea-origin HMS 1&2 (80:20).

This took the scrap indices slightly higher in the daily calculations. Fastmarkets’ daily index for steel scrap, HMS 1&2 (80:20 mix), North Europe origin, cfr Turkey came to $506.53 per tonne on Thursday, up by $0.32 per tonne day on day.

And the corresponding daily index for steel scrap, HMS 1&2 (80:20 mix), United States origin, cfr Turkey was $511.11 per tonne on May 20, up by $0.33 per tonne.

The premium for US material over European scrap was $4.58 per tonne on May 20, compared with $4.57 per tonne on May 19.

The increase in the prices was driven by a change in the Chinese tax policy that has sharply increased steel demand in the region.

On April 28, China’s ministry of finance announced that, in order to better guarantee the supply of steel resources and promote the high-quality development of the domestic steel industry, the import tariff for certain steel products originating from outside the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), including square billet, was to be reduced from 2% to zero from May 1.