Steel Products Prices North America

US Scrap Exports Down 40.5%

April 13, 2014

Year to date scrap exports through February are down by 40.5 percent from the same period last year. Total YTD was 2,034,000 metric tonnes a decline of 1,387,000 tonnes. Figure 1 shows that all major purchasing nations were down on a three month moving average basis. Turkey and China contributed the most to the YTD tonnage decline, down by 725,000 and 278,000 tonnes respectively. Taiwan was down by 170,000 tonnes and India by 111,000 tonnes.

The only significant nations to increase their purchases, and they are not shown on Figure 1 because historically they don’t rate, were Japan and Malaysia. Exports to the Far East in total were down by 17.2 percent YTD through February.

Scrap export prices are reported by the AMM every Tuesday for an 80:20 mix of #1 and #2 heavy melt in Dollars per tonne FOB New York and Los Angeles for bulk tonnage sales. Between December 30th and March 3rd prices declined by $35 and $45 / tonne on the East and West coasts respectively. Since then through April 7th prices have recovered by $40 and $8 respectively. On April 7th AMM reported that buying at the higher price levels was limited.