European highlights

摘要

Northern European export prices firmed over the past month as demand from Turkey strengthened and the number of offers dropped. There is as yet no sign of these price increases having fed through to domestic markets, but given that steel output tends to be lower than average in December this is perhaps unsurprising. Turkish mills were adept earlier this year at staggering their scrap buying from northern Europe so as to neither leave them short of supplies nor contribute to a run on scrap prices. By the start of December, however, lower-than-average stocks and fewer offers of deep-sea scrap shipments appears to have left Turkish producers exposed to rising import prices. MBR understands that a Turkish mill bought a mixed cargo of shredded and HMS No.1&2 scrap for roughly 372 dollars/tonne cfr at the end of the first week of December. This was roughly 10-15 dollars/tonne higher than prevailing levels two to three months prior. Since then, MBR has also heard of cargoes of shredded material being booked for delivery into Turkey at prices closer to 380 dollars/tonne cfr.