Turkish steelmakers and international scrap recyclers are fairly quiet this week in discussing December/January shipments of bulk cargoes, with electric arc furnaces keen to sell more finished steel products before turning their attention more closely to scrap imports, market participants said Tuesday.
Shortsea business is going on from Rostov-Marmara/Aliaga ports at rangebound levels compared to last week, although some large Romanian recyclers are just tallying up old contracts as their offers do not align with Turkish mills' buying demands for now. The last deepsea cargo seen on the market was concluded at the end of last week at $389-394/mt CFR Iskenderun for 12,000 mt of heavy melting scrap I/II (80/20 blend) and 8,000 mt of shred to be shipped from a major US recycler's Puerto Rico-based yards.
Since the end of last week, Turkey's mills have been trying to force up reinforcing bar prices to provide some margin from raw material costs to finished product export prices, and succeeded to some extent in selling to Egypt.
Traders in North Africa managed to purchase as many as 100,000 mt in the last days' trade of last week and Sunday. However, since then the Egyptian Pound has weakened against the US dollar, and local producers in Egypt have tried to move to shut out further imports.
Many of Turkey's other large export markets -- based in Gulf Cooperation Council markets -- have remained largely silent due to oversupply, which has left some recyclers to question whether US recyclers can succeed in achieving increases to Turkey.
"Turkey's export markets are not going well, generally speaking, the US recyclers are keeping quiet, I've heard, because they know they cannot achieve $395/mt CFR for 80/20; this is what's keeping them away," one large European recycler said.
"When Turkey's mills are selling at maximum $590/mt FOB to MENA, if mills were to buy at $395/mt CFR for 80/20 from the US, they would not make any money," an importer in Turkey said.
Platts daily assessment softened $1/mt on Tuesday to $391/mt CFR for premium HMS I/II (80/20 blend), reflecting the market sentiment and shortsea sale prices seen in the Turkish import market.
