Steel Products Prices North America

Scrap Exports from the US through April

June 11, 2014

Year to date steel scrap exports through April are down by 25.2 percent from the same period last year. Total YTD was 4,761,374 metric tonnes a decline of 1,603,386 tonnes. Figure 1 shows that the three month moving average (3MMA) picked up in April but was still below the monthly average of all years back through 2007.

Turkey and Taiwan were partly responsible for the uptick with increases of 24 percent and 15 percent respectively in the 3MMA through April compared to 3MMA through March. On the same basis there was also a 19 percent increase in shipments to other nations not considered in this analysis because they have been historically minor purchasers, YTD Kuwait and Pakistan have purchased 228,367 and 132,913 tons respectively. Tonnage shipped to South Korea has been declining all year and China’s purchases have been minimal. Exports to the Far East in total were down by 12.3 percent YTD through April compared to the same period in 2013.

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. Prices on the East coast recovered strongly between, February 24th and April 28th then declined to 350.93 on June 9th. The West coast price at $354.57 is now higher than the East coast for the first time since March 17th.