Trading activity continued to slow on Germany’s ferrous scrap market at the beginning of August. As the summer holiday season reached its peak, demand from German steel mills was lacklustre in many places, as had been expected.
The export business delivered little, if any, momentum. However, scrap also remains in very scant supply, so German ferrous scrap prices did not come under any significant pressure. Prices were stable to slightly lower in August, depending on the region and the scrap grade in question.
Scrap prices faced the strongest downward pressure in Northern Germany. Merchants and recyclers in this region had to compete with low port prices at export yards. Insiders identified much cooler demand for imports from Turkey as the primary reason for this development. Instead of importing scrap, Turkish steel producers had preferred to stock up on Asian billets in recent weeks. Market insiders said that these billets were being sold cheaply, in particular by China, due to the construction crisis in that country.
Read the full monthly report on the steel scrap market in Germany and access price tables and graphing tools here:
