Scrap Exports from the US through October

In the first ten months of 2014, scrap exports totaled 12,905,000 metric tons, down by 17.6 percent from the same period in 2013. In the single month of October exports were 1,337,000 tons. Figure 1 shows that the three month moving average has been fairly consistent for the last six months through October and continued to be lower than the average in any year from 2008 through 2013. The most obvious trends so far this year has been that Taiwan and Korea have been almost mirror images of each other. Turkey’s tonnage picked up in September and October in spite of all we read about them preferring Black Sea sources. Year to date Turkey is down by 1.3 million tons or 28.5 percent. China’s tonnage has been quite consistently low this year on a 3MMA basis ranging from 53,000 to 90,000 tons per month. This is compared to over 500,000 tons per month in 2009 when they were the highest volume importer.