Article Prompts Response on Chinese Scrap

On Thursday, Steel Market Update (SMU) published an article about the scrap markets entitled “Ferrous Scrap: Sideways in July?” In the article, John Harris, the former scrap buyer for ArcelorMittal and one of our speakers at this year’s SMU Steel Summit Conference, gave his opinions on the future issues associated with the industry. On Friday, we received a response from Philip Hoffman, Hoffman Iron & Steel, who is currently living in Vietnam and well aware of the issues the Chinese are having with scrap and scrap exports. Here are the comments he asked be published in response to those made by Mr. Harris:

I am dealing with and have visited mills here (Vietnam) that are importing Chinese scrap. They were counting on shipments that they did not receive due to contract cancellations as a result of increasing scrap prices in China over the last two weeks. One mill that I visited last week that melts 50,000 tpm had an inventory of 10,000 due to shipments that didn’t arrive from China. Another mill I visited yesterday had very little inventory, as well. As a result, there have been production cuts and delayed shipments on billet orders, which is now putting upward pressure on billet prices. So, mills here keep using Chinese scrap as a negotiating tool, but the reality is that actual shipments from China are not that significant in terms of total tonnage.