Turkiye: Imported scrap prices strengthen amid limited availablity, trade muted

Turkish imported scrap trade was silent this week as suppliers showed strong resistance to give further discounts amid low availability of the material. Offers moved up towards mid-week amid the shortage. SteelMint's price assessment for US-origin HMS 1&2 (80:20) stood unchanged w-o-w at $350-355/t CFR.

As bids from Turkish mills were too low, scrap sellers looked for other destinations to sell the material at better prices.

Turkish steel mills, on the other hand, started to push their finished and semi-finished steel offers up, anticipating bullish steps from major scrap exporters. Industry participants expect high scrap offers will be quoted soon as not much material is available.

Market Overview

• Domestic rebar offers up on strong scrap prices: Turkish steel producers decided to raise their rebar prices for both local and overseas customers amid strong imported scrap offers. However, demand still remained low. Meanwhile, major steel producer ICDAS kept its rebar prices unchanged after a recent cut of $630/t exw-Biga and $641/t CFR Marmara.
  
  
• Automotive sales down 7.3% in January-July: In the first seven months of the year, domestic sales of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles saw a decrease of 7.3% y-o-y to around 410,110 units.
  
  

Sales of passenger cars rose by 9.1% y-o-y in July while those of and light commercial vehicles declined by 35.3% m-o-m to 52,206 units, according to the statistics released by the Turkish Automotive Distributors Association (ODD).

• Ferrous scrap imports decline 28% in Jun'22: Turkiye's ferrous scrap imports were recorded at 1.59 mnt in Jun'22, a decline of 28% m-o-m compared to 2.22 mnt in May'22, as per SteelMint data. USA continued to be the largest supplier at 0.36 mnt, followed by the UK and the Netherlands at 0.28 mnt and 0.16 mnt respectively. On a y-o-y basis, scrap imports decreased by 19% as against 1.96 mnt in Jun'21.
  
  

Outlook: Turkiye's imported scrap buyers are likely to return to the market to book fresh cargoes for Aug-Sept shipments, owing to a rebound in scrap prices and an improved finished steel market.