Scrap Prices Rangebound or Surprise to Come?

Perhaps the scrap market can best be described by those actively sourcing/selling ferrous scrap. Here is how one of the larger groups saw the market this week, “The scrap trade was quite tumultuous this week.  Scrap demand, both export and domestic was robust, forcing the scrap processors to take a hard look at what sales to take or pass on.  Regional disparities were much more significant than usual as scrap was dislocated from the Midwest into the “river” and Southeast markets.  However, some of this pressure was relieved by availability and bookings of competitively priced imports of scrap and metallics.  Overall, the market settled generally sideways to up slightly ($5-10/gt), primarily based on regional factors and April settlements…”

When referring to imports of metallics our source is referencing pig iron and DRI (direct reduced iron). We spoke directly with one of the pig iron sources for the domestic steel mills and we were told that recent deals to Nucor and SDI (Columbus) were done at $268-$268.50 out of Brazil.