Brazilian sellers have ramped up containerized exports of steel scrap into South Asian markets over the past year but this explosion in export sales is unlikely to be a long-term trend, sources have told Fastmarkets.

Base metals prices on the London Metal Exchange are for the most part weaker this morning, Tuesday September 19. The exceptions are aluminium and copper prices that are up by 0.6% and 0.1%, respectively, with the latter at $6,537 per tonne. The rest of the complex are off between 0.3% for zinc prices and 0.9% for nickel prices. Volume has been above average with 8,054 lots traded as of 06:27 BST.

Global scrap prices weakened in most markets except Taiwan during the working week from Monday July 9 to Friday July 13, amid sluggish demand in the major regions.

Metal Bulletin reviews the major stories affecting the steel market this week.

The fruits of Marius Kloppers’ crusade for shorter-term prices for iron ore were clear in BHP Billiton’s first-half results published last week. The group’s underlying profits were up 59.7% year-on-year at $17.3 billion for the second half of 2010, but iron ore ebit was up 178%. Iron ore’s share of earnings rose from below one quarter to nearly 40% of earnings, as BHP shifted nearly all sales to more lucrative index-linked or spot prices.

The latest news and price moves to start the Asian day on Wednesday May 2.

Barring those for tin, base metals prices on the Shanghai Futures Exchange were all up during the morning trading session on Tuesday July 30, with the complex benefiting from rising hope amid continuing US-China trade talks.

Turkey’s steel mills continued their deep-sea purchases for June this week with prices showing a slight decrease, while Taiwanese import and US export prices were holding stable.

China’s daily crude steel output hit a new high in mid-April, continuing the rebound in the first ten days of the month.

Editor Vera Blei looks at the main news covered by Steel First over the past week.