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Steel News November 16, 2016 08:09:39 PM

Mike Marley’s Shredded Power #71

Michael Marley
ScrapMonster Author
U.S. steelmakers are facing new challenges from their foreign rivals, but it doesn’t involve unfairly priced imported steel products. Instead, fierce competition awaits some domestic mills if they need to buy much heavy melt and/or shredded scrap next month. December, sometimes a quiet time for both the suppliers of obsolete scrap and the buyers at U.S. mills, could be a hot market this year.

Mike Marley’s Shredded Power #71

WSEM World Steel Exchange Marketing

Mike Marley’s Shredded Power #71

Export demand sets the pace for ferrous scrap prices.

November 16, 2016

Mike Marley (484) 751-5600

Peter F. Marcus (201) 503-0902

Commentary:

U.S. steelmakers are facing new challenges from their foreign rivals, but it doesn’t involve unfairly priced imported steel products.  Instead, fierce competition awaits some domestic mills if they need to buy much heavy melt and/or shredded scrap next month.   December, sometimes a quiet time for both the suppliers of obsolete scrap and the buyers at U.S. mills, could be a hot market this year.

Some foreign steelmakers have been paying higher prices for scrap from the U.S. and other overseas suppliers.  Thus, U.S. exporters this week and last have been trying to buy more scrap through quiet deals.  They probably will be doing the same in coming weeks before U.S. mills begin buying scrap for December.  In some coastal cities, exporters have paid as much as $10 per ton more for export 80/20 heavy melt than nearby U.S. mills paid earlier this month for higher quality No. 1 heavy melt.  Other exporters are arranging and paying for transport of scrap, an unusual amenity welcomed by smaller yards that don’t have huge trucks and must rely on independent haulers.

The renewed offshore competition comes while domestic steelmakers face two additional seasonal challenges – winter weather and tight-fisted corporate spending policies.  These are the usual year-end challenges that the mills’ scrap buyers and their brokers face.  What has made the situation more troubling this year is the apparent shortage of coking coal.  Coal mines have shut own in several countries after prices collapsed last year.

Now, because of reduced supplies, coking coal prices have risen dramatically in the past few months.  Spot market prices have topped $300 per tonne, triple the price seen earlier this year.  Much of this rise has come in the past three or four months.  Iron ore prices have risen as well, though not as sharply as coal.  They are now almost $80 per tonne, a mere doubling from the low seen at the end of last year.

China, the world’s largest steelmaker and user of coking coal, has also cut its coal output.  But its goals are twofold – to reduce mining overcapacity and to improve air quality.   Unfortunately, this cutback has coincided with the central government’s promotion of domestic steel consumption through construction spending.

These price hikes have driven the cost of steelmaking at some BOF mills to more than $400 per tonne.  That is $150 per tonne higher than the average price paid for shredded scrap in the U.S.  Thus, greater scrap usage is what many foreign mills see as the solution to their twin problems, namely, the need to stretch the output of iron from their blast furnaces and to limit the rise in their steelmaking costs.  They can achieve both by using more scrap in their BOFs, many believe.  Most integrated steel mills can use between 5 and as much as 25% scrap as part of the materials charged into their BOFs.

U.S. mills have more leeway in determining how much they will use because scrap is more plentiful in advanced economies.  Steelmakers in developing countries, on the other hand, have limited supplies.  Most use home or revert scrap, generated in the mill during the steel production process, but lack adequate local supplies.  With foreign scrap now available at a deep discount, it would be foolish to ignore the cost-cutting opportunity even if it takes a month or longer to transport it across the Pacific Ocean.

Not only Turkey, but China and India have bigger appetites for foreign scrap.

Consequently, several offshore mills have been buying more scrap from the U.S. lately.  The new buying binge has lifted the prices in Turkey to as high as $275 per tonne for 80/20 heavy melt, up more than $30 per tonne from a month ago.  Prices for shredded scrap that are usually part of the scrap cargoes bought by Turkish EAF mills are $5 per tonne higher.  But some export traders believe that 80/20 heavy melt price could reach $300 per tonne before year’s end and they note that the 80/20 futures contracts on the London Metals Exchange (LME) are already at $304.50 per tonne for December, and at $304 per tonne for January, a sign that the stronger export market will persist in the new year.

Across the Pacific, Chinese steelmakers purchased five cargoes, or about 150,000 tonnes, in the past week and that may be more indicative of the new strength in offshore scrap demand.  One U.S. West Coast trader said these are their biggest overseas scrap purchases in about five years and predicted that they will be buying more in the coming weeks.  U.S. exporters booked orders for four of those cargoes, he added. The fifth went to an Australian supplier.

Chinese and Turkish steelmakers are not the only offshore mills feasting on the cheaper scrap.  Indian traders have been snapping up containers of shredded scrap from all three U.S. coasts.  Prices range from $250 per tonne to as high as $260 per tonne delivered to the docks at the largest U.S. East Coast ports.  Remarkably, said one East Coast dealer, the Indian traders are not challenging his price demands.  “They just want to know how many containers I can give them,” he said.

The mixed heavy melt is often seen as the bellwether price because it makes up much of the imported scrap sold to Turkish EAF mills that produce billet, rebar and other steel long products.  It serves as the basis for ferrous scrap futures contracts traded on the LME.  Trading in the 80/20 HMS has been rising steadily since its December 2015 debut.  According to the LME, it traded almost 150,000 tonnes in October, including 38,000 tonnes traded on one day alone.

Another U.S. West Coast export trader said 80/20 heavy melt may be the bellwether price for some of the EAF mills, but many integrated mills prefer shredded scrap.  In the international ferrous scrap market, most scrap importers pay only a modest $5 per tonne premium for shredded scrap over the price of the lower quality 80/20 heavy melt.  But shredded scrap is more desirable because of it higher quality and density. Advanced recovery systems used by most shredders these days remove unwanted nonferrous metals like copper and lead.  Many integrated mills make steel sheet and regard nonferrous metal as contaminants.  (WSEM is working with the Nasdaq Futures Exchange (NFX) to launch Midwest U.S. Shredded Steel Scrap TSI Index futures in early 2017).

U.S. mills may have to outbid the exporters and overseas mills for scrap.

Initially, some domestic steelmakers bought some scrap earlier this month at prices that were up by $20 per gross ton.  That was the case in Detroit, which often serves as pricing pacesetter in the Midwest, but those modest gains were short-lived.  And, said a local trader there, some area mills obtained only a portion of their needs with those offers and later were reaching out to suppliers in other regions with higher offers.

But mills in those regions were likewise having problems getting what they wanted and now had the added problem of an outsider offering more money to their suppliers.  That set off a price war, he said.  Some mills responded by boosting both their local prices and countering the springboard offers from the Detroit area mills with higher offers to the dealers there.

Ultimately, some Detroit area mills had to up their ante. They paid an added $10 per ton for key grades like shredded scrap and five-foot plate and structural scrap.  The problem, said the trader, was that some dealers were offering less scrap to the mills this month. Some didn’t have enough; others may be holding back tons because they wanted higher offers.  The mills, however, were unwilling to pay the higher prices, not just to their local dealers.  They need to pay more if they wanted to bring scrap inland from East Coast exporters and other suppliers there, a buying strategy used in the past when export demand was weaker.

But if New York area shredders are getting as much as $260 per tonne for containerized shredded at the docks, a northern Ohio trader said, mills in the Midwest would have to pay as much $285 per ton or higher to take that scrap away from overseas buyers. That would be $40 per ton higher than the $245 per ton that mills in the Cleveland and Pittsburgh areas paid for shredded scrap this month. And, those prices, the highest in the U.S. this month, are up by about $35 per ton from October.  And they could face even higher prices in December, he added.

At present, said a Birmingham-based dealer, most of the mills in the South got what they needed this month though a few are still looking to buy additional tons for December at this month’s prices.  He isn’t selling any more scrap now, he said unless the offers are higher, but he declined to put a number on what he expects and noted that it is only midmonth.

Another trader in the region said the scrap market is headed into a “perfect storm.”  Domestic sheet steel prices have risen by $30 per ton for the second time in as many months and if they hold at these higher levels – $490-$500 per net ton for hot-rolled coil – that will encourage dealers to demand higher prices for this scrap.  Scrap export prices and demand are stronger and the prices of alternate metallics like imported pig iron have risen as well.  At the same time, he added, few of the mills have much inventory on the ground either at their mills in their own scrap yards.

But another Ohio based broker said some domestic mills may not be as hungry as dealers assume.  Several smaller mills will have maintenance outages later this month and extended shutdown because of the upcoming Thanksgiving holidays.  Others will curtail operations during the opening weeks of deer hunting season when more of their workers will be out in the woods.  At the same time, he added, steel production has not shown any significant upturns in the past month.  Indeed, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, domestic raw steel production slipped to 1,580,000 net tons last week, down 1.4 percent from the 1,604,000 tons produced the previous week.

Shredded Scrap Thermometer:  Are there shredded alternatives?
 
Domestic mills could be battling each other as well as the offshore market as they try to obtain added supplies of scrap this month and next. For the EAF mills, it’s usually a battle between which mills have the most loyal local suppliers or which mill is willing to pay a slightly higher price to distant suppliers.  The price burden gets a bit heavier when the EAF mills are battling integrated mills for scrap.  If scrap prices rise $50 per-ton, the EAF’s raw material costs will rise $50 per-ton. Meanwhile, the integrated mill’s raw material costs will only increase by $10 per ton, putting the EAF mills at a significant competitive disadvantage.

• All four of the largest EAF mills in the U.S. have their own scrap processing units that include captive shredders.  Some mills run these; others now are hiring other scrap dealers to manage these operations.  Regardless of who is running the shredder, they are expected do it efficiently and ensure that their nearby mill gets adequate supplies each month despite the changes in scrap prices elsewhere in the market.

• In 2015, shredded supplies were tight while busheling was abundant and available at lower or competitive prices. Some long products mills used the higher quality industrial sheet steel scrap as a substitute for shredded.  Losses in output because of lower density of busheling were offset in the higher metals recovery rates of the sheet scrap.

• Some mills like Nucor Corp. have acquired or built direct reduced ironmaking plants ostensibly to provide alternate steelmaking materials to busheling for its sheet mills. In addition, if obsolete scrap supplies get too tight or prices get too high, the DRI can be used to make billet, rebar and structural steel products as is the practice in several gas-rich countries.

Unlike busheling and other industrial scrap in which the supply is seen as inelastic and insensitive to price changes, suppliers of the materials used to make shredded scrap and other obsolete grades are quick to respond to price changes and are the wild cards in the obsolete scrap supply game.  These players are:

• Auto wreckers – they are still the main suppliers for many shredders, yet they have no problem holding back cars when prices are too low.  Their main products are resalable parts for do-it-yourself mechanics, but they have also learned to strip all the most valuable metal parts, including the vehicle’s drive train, and to sell those separately to other metals users.  Shredders today are getting vehicles that have substantially less ferrous metal content than they did a few years ago.

• Wreckers are not the only suppliers that are willing to sit on their scrap when displeased with prices.  Smaller dealers often hold back supplies of shreddables, or if the price is right, they will sell this shreddable material to the docks as lower quality export heavy melt.

The Nasdaq Futures Exchange (NFX) expects to start trading in the Midwest US shredded scrap index futures in early 2017.  The contract will trade in 20gross ton units with the prices settled on the 11th day of each month against the TSI Midwest US Shredded Scrap Index published by Platts.  For additional information about shredded futures trading, contact John Conheeney at WSEM.  His phone number is 201-503-0922 and his email is jconheeney@wsemgroup.com.


Note:  Each issue, Mike Marley gives his opinion on the one-month steel scrap price outlook.  He explains the key reasons for his view and highlights the “wild cards” that might cause him to be wrong.


This report includes “forward-looking” statements that are based on current expectations about future events and are subject to uncertainties and factors relating to operations and the business environment, all of which are difficult to predict.  Although we believe that the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, they can be affected by inaccurate assumptions we might make or by known or unknown risks and uncertainties, including among other things, changes in prices, shifts in demand, variations in supply, international currency movements, technological developments, governmental actions and/or other factors.  The information contained in this report is based upon or derived from sources that are believed to be reliable; however, no representation is made that such information is accurate or complete in all material respects, and reliance upon such information as the basis for taking any action is neither authorized nor warranted.  WSD does not solicit, and avoids receiving, non-public material information from its clients and contacts in the course of its business.  The information that we publish in our reports and communicate to our clients is not based on material non-public information.  
The officers, directors, employees or stockholders of World Steel Dynamics Inc. do not directly or indirectly hold securities of, or that are related to, one or more of the companies that are referred to herein.  World Steel Dynamics Inc. may act as a consultant to one or more of the companies mentioned in this report.  
Copyright © 2016 by World Steel Dynamics Inc. all rights reserved.

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