East coast buying spree

Considering the depressed conditions that have characterized U.S. ferrous scrap markets during much of 2015, it appeared in November that the U.S.’s single biggest export customer for this material, Turkey, had increased its U.S. purchases this year.

Exports of ferrous scrap to Turkey from the U.S. had increased by about 4 percent for the first eight months of 2015 compared with the same period in 2014, according to figures from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

While those figures seem promising at first glance, they also may indicate that some excess scrap in the eastern part of the country had finally found a home.

LONG-TERM PATTERNS

Mike Marley, steel industry analyst with World Steel Exchange Marketing, headquartered in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and author of the weekly newsletter “Mike Marley’s Shredded Power,” says Turkish mill buyers have for decades tended to binge buy ferrous scrap, which remained the case in 2015.

“They come in and buy 10 to 20 cargoes from all their suppliers,” says Marley, who adds that he believes Turkish mill buyers tend to do all of their purchasing at once to ensure they have the needed supply in light of the long transport time from its three major supplying regions: the U.S., the Baltic and Western Europe.

Marley says Turkish mills also tend to buy their raw materials well in advance, as it takes about five or six weeks for material to be gathered, loaded and shipped from most East Coast ports to Turkey.

“So when Turkey buys from the U.S., they usually buy two months in advance of what their needs are,” Marley says.

One recent binge occurred in late November 2015, Marley says, when Turkish mills booked East Coast cargoes likely to feed January-February 2016 production.

The November purchase was business as usual for Turkish consumers this year: USGS figures indicate that, on average, for the first eight months of 2015, Turkish consumers had imported 308,000 metric tons of U.S. steel scrap per month. That is the equivalent of eight or nine Handymax vessels, which typically have from 35,000 to 50,000 deadweight tons of capacity.

Marley further explains that while Turkish mill buyers also have purchased scrap from West Coast exporters, those deals are less prevalent and may have been facilitated by offers of bargain ocean freight rates from shipping companies looking to move one or more vessels to more active Atlantic Ocean trade routes.

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Marley also referred to early December 2015 news of a prompt cargo shipment out of the Baltic Sea region, which can be delivered in about four weeks. He says this shipment may indicate the Turkish buyer is concerned about inventory. That cargo was sold at $193 per ton for 80/20 HMS (heavy melting steel) and a bit more per ton for bonus grade (5-inch plate and structural scrap), while earlier shipments were purchased at lower prices.

“Guys on the East Coast are kind of concerned and are still looking for prices in the $190-to-$195 range,” he says. These exporters are likely to reason that if the Turkish buyer was willing to pay $193 for material from the Baltic region, he or she should be willing to buy from them for at least $190 in the near term.

However, one “wild card” in the market that could affect the offered price for steel scrap, Marley says, has been the low cost—around $250 delivered to Turkey—of Chinese billet, which, considering conversion costs and possible value-added tax, would require a U.S. ferrous scrap export price of between $180 and $185 to remain competitive, he says.

Marley warns, “That could drop the price a bit.”

However, he says the biggest problem currently facing exporters on the U.S. East Coast is the availability of material from smaller dealers in the region. “At the end of the year, some guys are going to sit on scrap and wait,” Marley says of these smaller dealers.

“I don’t know if they can make any real commitments,” he says of the exporters. “They may hold out for that $190-to-$195 range and try to keep the Turks at bay for a couple weeks,” Marley adds.

HMS is the main feedstock for Turkish mills, which prefer it to busheling and shredded scrap, he says. “That’s what they like to buy,” Marley says. “They don’t necessarily care about shredded. They will take some, but that’s because it lines the bottom of the boat nicely.”

Marley says the markets are waiting to see whether the Turkish buyers will have another binge buy in the not-too-distant future. “That’s the big question: Will they need scrap and will the U.S. guys be willing to cut the price down to be competitive,” he says.

Another key question, Marley says, is how dependent Turkish mills are willing to become on Chinese billet, which could comprise a main source of feedstock going forward. He predicts one of Turkey’s traditional suppliers, Russia, likely will be cutting all supplies of billet and scrap to Turkish mills in light of Turkey’s November 2015 shoot down of a Russian fighter jet. “That may leave them with few other places, except for the Baltic, Western Europe, the U.S. [for scrap] or billet from China,” Marley says.

After adding tax and conversion costs to that of Chinese billet, the price comes to around $300 per ton, he says. “You’re still in the range where it’s competitive,” Marley says, adding, however, that Turkish mills ultimately may be opposed to using larger proportions of Chinese billet if it means they no longer need to melt scrap.

Baltic region scrap also could be at risk during the winter, Marley says, if freezing conditions make routes unnavigable.

Turkish mills actively have purchased scrap from U.S. exporters since the late 1990s, he says, with the introduction of export restrictions from Russia. Since then, Marley adds, Turkish purchases have increased steadily from Western and Eastern Europe and from the U.S.

Today he says these three regions each have accounted for one-third of Turkey’s imports, depending on the price and the strength of the U.S. dollar. But, he says the use of more Chinese billet as a feedstock in the last year or so has changed that picture, perhaps creating four equal suppliers of raw material to Turkey instead of three.

While the strength of the U.S. dollar may be a factor in Turkey’s choice of supplier, Marley says it’s difficult to know for sure how much of an influence that has been. When the U.S. dollar is strong, Marley says, exporters in the U.K. and Western Europe are more likely to offer discounts where they can. He says European suppliers can undersell U.S. shippers when they have a comparative advantage in terms of currency. Still, he adds, “how much it affects things is tough to gauge.”

HIGHER SALES IN 2015

While U.S. shippers posted slight increases in the amount of ferrous scrap exported to Turkey for the first eight months of 2015 compared with the same period from 2014, Marley says exports have been trending downward for some time.

Figures from the USGS indicate that in 2012 the U.S. exported 6.4 million metric tons of ferrous scrap to Turkey. Since then, the level has dropped, and in 2014 the U.S. exported 3.6 million metric tons of ferrous scrap to Turkey. As of the first eight months of 2015, the U.S. had exported 2.5 million metric tons of ferrous scrap to Turkey.

Even so, Marley says U.S. shippers have not had to discount their sales to Turkey and have been able to buy material at prices that still can yield a profit.

“Demand is so weak that they’ve been able to buy material cheap enough,” he says of U.S. shippers.

For example, Marley says some exporters recently offered to by scrap locally for $115 per ton, selling to Turkish consumers at $175. After shipping costs were factored in, the dealer’s margin was around $25, he says. “That’s healthier than it had been in some cases in the not-too-distant past, when they were selling at a loss.”

He also cites instances where exporters made commitments to ship cargo and then did not have the material.

Marley says between the lower amounts offered to closer, local dealers and the higher per ton amounts offered to dealers as far away as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, he believes East Coast exporters have managed to make modest margins recently.

Don Zulanch of scrap processing firm Cohen, based in Middletown, Ohio, is one dealer who recently benefitted from the practice of “springboarding,” in which exporters pay a bit more for scrap from farther locales. He says he recently sold metal to a Turkish buyer though an East Coast broker who was willing to pay Cohen a bit more for its scrap than what it was offering locally. In this case, Zulanch says his firm took the order in mid-November 2015 for material to ship the third week of December, allowing just under six weeks to prepare and transport the material to the East Coast. The order, for No. 1 HMS delivered to the port, was estimated to arrive at Turkish mills by the end of January.

“[They] gave me a price that was better than I’ve heard in a long time,” he says.

However, Zulanch also notes that he hasn’t consistently sold materials for export to Turkey over the last four to six months. He adds that while the December 2015 price reflected an improvement, it was still $100 lower than that of six months ago. Still, this deal was a smart one for his company, Zulanch says.

“As soon as the car is unloaded, they make arrangements to pay,” he says, noting that Cohen doesn’t have to wait for the scrap to be loaded in the vessel. “It’s a lot easier to do that than for us to negotiate directly with Turkey or China,” he says.

Zulanch says Cohen ships its ferrous scrap destined for the export market in 85,000-gross-ton quantities by open top railcars, a practice he says the company has followed for such deals that have been struck on and off for close to a decade. He says he doesn’t ship containerized ferrous scrap to the East Coast, which may have been mildly popular at one time but isn’t today.

One notable facet of these export deals, Zulanch says, is that Turkish buyers are not necessarily reliable and could leave the market without warning as quickly as they entered it.

“Turkey is very independent in terms of when they want material and paying what they want,” he says, noting that as of early December 2015 it seemed Turkish buyers were perhaps out of the market again.

However, Zulanch also says Cohen has plenty of other options for selling its scrap.

“When they’re not in the market, we go domestic,” he says. “When they’re in the market, we like to go to Turkey. The appetite of Turkey is the deciding factor.”

However, Zulanch also notes that when Turkey is out of the market, U.S. scrap tends to accumulate at U.S. mills. He explains that when Turkey isn’t buying, processors have more scrap on the ground that often gets moved inland, where it ends up being offered to his customers, a situation that’s far from ideal.

“That’s what’s been happening, and that’s why the prices have been going down,” he says.

Marley says he feels demand for U.S. scrap from Turkish mills going into 2016 looks good for a few major reasons. “It’s a growing and developing economy, but it’s also a key export producer and revenue producer. A lot of steel is exported to other Middle East countries,” he says. However, these exports of finished products also extend to further markets, including the United States.

The author is a managing editor with the Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at lmckenna@gie.net.