JAPAN STEEL SCRAP: Export prices dragged up by high domestic demand

Strong steel scrap demand in the Japanese domestic market is now raising export prices from the East Asian nation, sources told Fastmarkets on Wednesday April 14.

Japanese blast furnace (BF) steelmakers have been raising the intake of the higher-grade heavy scrap (HS) material into their converters this month, as Fastmarkets reported in March. Japanese BF mills were heard to be paying ?49,000 ($450) per tonne delivered for HS this week.
That comes on the back of comments from the Japan Iron and Steel Federation (Jisf) that Japan's steel industry will aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
"Japanese BF mills are facing a CO2 problem, so they are trying to increase their consumption of scrap. BFs only use high grades, so the high grade-H2 premium will continue to increase," a Japanese scrap trader told Fastmarkets.

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