Ferrous market takes on flat topography

Steel mill scrap purchasing transactions in the United States in late September and the first three weeks in October show domestic mills continuing to buy scrap in a falling market that finally has shown signs of flattening.

The figures collected by the Raw Material Data Aggregation Service (RMDAS) of Pittsburgh-based MSA Inc. show the price of two of the three major grades it tracks changed by only $1 per ton in the Sept. 21 to Oct. 20 timeframe. Shredded scrap, however, lost $13 per ton in value on average during that 30-day period.

Staying relatively level in value were No. 1 heavy melting steel (HMS), which lost an average of $1 per ton in value throughout the U.S., and the RMDAS Prompt Industrial Composite (No. 1 busheling, No. 1 bundles and factory bundles), which managed to rise by $1 per ton on average.

Regionally, prompt grades averaged within $6 per ton of each other in the three RMDAS regions (North Central/East, North Midwest and South). Shredded scrap showed similar consistency, ranging from $382 to $389 per ton across all three regions.

The greatest regional variation occurred with No. 1 HMS, which averaged just $340 per ton in the traditionally export-heavy North Central/East region but $364 per ton in the South. That actually narrows a gap from the previous 30-day period, when HMS was fetching $35 per ton more in the South than it was in the Northeast.

If the export market is necessary to boost the fortunes of HMS prices, particularly in the Northeast, recent reports from information services provider Davis Index are not especially encouraging.

As of Oct. 24, Davis was reporting the most recent week has started with bids largely unchanged from the prior weeks in the month. “Demand is muted as Turkish mills continue to struggle with weak steel product sales and increased natural gas and electricity costs,” the news and pricing service says.

A day earlier, Davis Index characterized imported shredded scrap prices in India as continuing to fall on low demand, citing both regional holidays and festivals and a liquidity crunch with secondary furnaces as contributing to the unhelpful demand landscape.

In the domestic market, some steel producers have been reporting narrower profits, although most CEOs continue to point to infrastructure investments as a bright spot.

Ongoing strikes by the United Auto Workers have continued into late October, but according to the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), steel output in the U.S. in the third week in October nonetheless was above the previous week’s output and up by 3.6 percent compared with one year earlier.