Sustained Turkish scrap uptrend fails to boost SE Asian billet prices

摘要

Prices in Southeast Asia’s steel billet market continued to face multiple headwinds in the week to Friday February 28, despite the sustained uptrend in the bellwether Turkish ferrous scrap import market. Many buyers had replenished their inventories previously or expect the rise in scrap prices to be unsustainable, leading to sluggish demand, a trader in the Philippines said. Ferrous scrap prices in Turkey, the world’s largest importer of the steelmaking raw material, have rebounded by more than $20 per tonne since it fell to a year-to-date low of $258.78 per tonne on February 5. The spread of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) across the world, including rising infection numbers in other parts of Asia such as South Korea and Japan, has also dampened market sentiment, sources told Fastmarkets.