As in July, there has been little activity on the German steel scrap market in the current month. In other years, the lull would be viewed as the market's typical summer slump, when both ferrous scrap arisings and sales are greatly reduced due to summer shutdowns at steel mills and manufacturing plants. This year, however, there is great concern that the usual autumn recovery could fail to materialise.
The steel industry's order intake, especially for reinforcing steel (rebar) and steel girders, remains poor, and accordingly the mills' scrap demand has been weak. The soft demand puts pressure on the price of steel scrap, which continued to fall in August. However, the drop was not as high as initially expected. A brisk export business with containerised scrap transported to Asia, coupled with a slight increase in Turkish scrap imports ensured that steel mills backed off from their initial demands for higher price cuts.
Market participants reported that scrap demand was extremely low, especially demand from manufacturers of structural steel, whose stocks of unsold products were reportedly still high. Widespread mill shutdowns were yet another indicator of the situation facing steelmakers....
