Scrap Trade Displayed Mixed Trends in October

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The latest trade statistics published by the Turkish Bureau of Statistics (TUIK) indicates significant decline in scrap imports by the country during the month of October this year. The imports witnessed 20.5% year-on-year decline during the month to total around 1.7 million tons. The U.S. was the key source, supplying around 395,000 tons of scrap to Turkey. The imports from the U.S. dropped sharply by 28% when compared with October 2017.

According to Japanese Ministry of Finance (MoF), the country’s scrap imports plunged heavily by more than 30% year-on-year to total around 13,000 tons in October 2018. However, the combined imports during Jan-Oct ’18 were still up by almost 24% when matched with the corresponding period in 2017. The Japanese scrap exports too dropped by nearly 10% to total around 580,000 tons. The top three destinations of Japanese scrap exports during the month were South Korea, Vietnam and China in that order.

Meantime, Thailand’s scrap imports have surged higher by 5.2% in October this year to nearly 173,000 tons. The Jan-Oct ’18 imports by the country edged higher by 6.6% year-on-year to total around 1.5 million tonnes.

A marginal jump of 2% to nearly 535,000 tons was reported in scrap imports by South Korea in October this year. The imports totaled around 5.39 million tons during the first ten months of the current year, higher by 7.8% when matched with the previous year.