INFOGRAPHIC: Decoding the latest trends in Asia's ferrous scrap market

Changes in the Asian ferrous scrap trade flows have seen imports in Taiwan and Vietnam shrink in 2019, but both territories raised their intake of Japanese material after exporters in Japan lowered their prices to generate more sales abroad on weakening domestic demand.

Vietnam's scrap imports fell 1.1% to 5.58 million tonnes last year, but Japan-origin volumes to the country rose by 41.4% to 2.19 million tonnes.
Similarly, scrap imports in Taiwan fell 2.9% year on year to 3.52 million tonnes but inbound shipments of Japanese materials rose 45% to 630,256 tonnes.
Against this backdrop, Fastmarkets launched four fob Japan ferrous scrap price assessments in February along with two others for scrap imports into South Korea and Bangladesh in March.
These, along with existing assessments for prices in Vietnam and Taiwan, give Fastmarkets a bigger footprint in the Asian scrap market.
 
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