Davis Index’s weekly northern Spain HMS 1&2 (80:20) and shredded small bulk ferrous scrap indices plunged by €36/mt ($44/mt) to €318/mt and €328/mt cfr, respectively, on Friday.
Spanish ferrous scrap import prices declined over the past seven days largely based on cues and recent developments in competing major deepsea trade routes.
Davis Index’s Turkish HMS 1&2 (80:20) import benchmark declined by $38.75/mt over the past week to $440/mt cfr Turkey on Jan 21.
This placed pressure on some north European docksides to drop purchase prices by €25/mt over the same period to protect relatively thin margins.
In the UK shortsea small bulk coaster market, prices witnessed similar declines with some fine nuances compared with European trade.
Compared with their north European-based counterparts, UK based ferrous scrap exporters are benefitting from relatively wide margins.
Davis Index understands that some opportunistic UK-based bulk processors have leveraged weaker Turkish import tags to push dockside purchase prices down £10-20/mt in the past 24-48 hours.
One UK-based merchant supplier said that the larger players were trying to maintain their “fatter margins”.
That said, another UK-based trader countered that some players had “panicked” given that Indian and Turkish purchasing had gone very quiet recently.
Davis Index’s UK small bulk ferrous scrap HMS 1&2 (80:20) and shredded indices fell €30/mt to €298/mt and €308/mt fob, respectively, on Jan 22.
(€1 = $1.22)