Summer supply crunch has scrap sentiment faltering

Earlier this month, steelmakers entered the scrap market at mixed pricing. The prevailing price for obsolescent grades fell $20 per gross ton (gt). However, some notable districts decided to only drop $10/gt.

The primes grades traded sideways in all districts, further widening the premium over shredded. At this early point, it’s a hard call to predict what June prices will do. Still, the sentiment is looking slightly weaker as steelmakers are announcing summer outages and hot-rolled coil (HRC) prices continue to fall.

Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller started his career in the scrap metal industry in 1978 at Luria Brothers in Cleveland. Over the last 40-plus years, he has worked in all capacities in the trading business. He has had positions in both domestic and international scrap trading. In addition to scrap, Miller was at the forefront of the pig iron trade and established a pig iron distribution company under the name of Ferrosource, Inc. Most recently, Miller has concentrated on the scrap export market and regularly does consulting for several companies in the industry.