Ferrous scrap export prices continued to lose ground despite the lack of bulk trades from the United States, with East Coast exporters located South of New England again reducing prices at the port while price expectations for the next bulk sale to Turkey soured further.
No cargoes were sold off either US coast in the past seven days. Still, the increasingly gloomy global scrap market outlook caused dock buying prices in two East Coast export regions to drop further. "Export is going to hell in a hand basket. The Turks have gone away, and China is dumping a lot of billets. The export sector is a mess, and it is really affecting the market on the East Coast," an East Coast processor said.Turkish steelmakers continued to sidestep the US export market, but one steel producer in the Iskenderun region booked a European cargo - comprising 25,000 tonnes of a 75:25 mix of No1 and No2 heavy melting scrap (HMS), 7,000 tonnes of a mixture of bonus and shredded scrap and 3,000 tonnes of busheling - at an average price of $285 per tonne cfr on December 18. Based on the price level of this sale, sources...