Scrap Prices North America

Detroit-area scrap buyer offering up $30-50/gt for December

December 6, 2023

A large Detroit-area scrap buyer entered the market on Wednesday offering to pay significantly higher prices than a month earlier.

The company offered busheling and shredded scrap up $50 per gross ton from November. Plate and structural were offered up $30 per gross ton from last month.

Recall that Detroit settled higher in November.

The Detroit-area offers are important because they often set the tone for scrap prices nationwide.

What they’re saying

Scrap market participants predicted in late November that December would settle higher.

There was a similar consensus among SMU survey respondents, approximately two-thirds of whom said scrap would move higher this month. (Editor’s note: Full results of SMU’s steel market survey will be released on Friday to data providers and to our premium members.)

Here is what some of those survey respondents had to say:

“Short supply of low residual scrap coupled with the tight pig iron situation. New capacity demand will keep this tight.”

“Sounds like the market is expecting up in December and in January.”

“Business starting off (2024) will be strong.”

“Normal winter flows.”

“The price of scrap going up will also enable prices to go up on finished product.”

SMU will update its scrap price ranges once markets have settled.

Michael Cowden

Michael Cowden is editor-in-chief for Steel Market Update. Cowden has covered the steel industry since 2007. He specializes in flat-rolled steel but has also reported on steel long products, steel pipe and tube, and aluminum. Before joining SMU, Cowden held reporting jobs at Fastmarkets AMM in Chicago, the Associated Press in Pittsburgh, and the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. He has also worked as a copy editor and in marketing at the University of Chicago Press. Cowden has a BA in English from the University of Chicago and an MSJ journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Contact him at michael@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7872.