Friday, March 25,
The unfortunate set of events sparked force majeure declarations by Japanese power utilities at Tohoku and Tokyo..* Tokyo steel declared the lowering of its purchasing prices for scrap steel .
The decision is due to immediate impact of earthquake which shut downed some of its electric arc furnaces in east Japan. The electric furnaces are anticipated to run steadily whereas demand for construction steel is likely to grow as renovations are in progress.
International Scrap prices have fallen by $10-20 /MT CFR, as no bookings were reported last week, said mill and trading sources across the region.
While Turkey is all set to monitor its scrap imports need. After energy imports, scrap iron and steel are the second most important intermediate goods that Turkey imports.
The foreign trade minister said that “We need to improve domestic scrap iron and steel sources. This is very important since Turkey uses only 5 million tons of domestic scrap and imports the remainder. If we can add another 5 million tons of domestic scrap to the iron and steel sector, we can prevent the transfer of $2.5 billion to foreign countries”.
This clearly implies that Turkey is trying to reduce its dependence on scrap imports. And since Turkish buyers determined the trend of international market so, reduced imports might signify some downward correction in prices in the long term.
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