Turkey Imported 12.9 Million Tons of Scrap During Jan-Aug ‘17

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): According to data published by the Turkish Iron and Steel Producers’ Association (TCUD), the scrap imports witnessed considerable jump during the opening eight months of the year. The imports recorded 12% growth to touch 12.9 million tons during this period. The Turkish scrap imports had totaled only 11.5 million tons during the corresponding eight-month period in 2016. The imports were valued at $3.5 billion, rising sharply by nearly 39% over the previous year.

The monthly steel import by Turkey totaled 1.6 million tons in August, significantly down by nearly 19.4%.

The key exporter of scrap to Turkey during Jan-Aug ’17 was the EU region. The imports from the region totaled 8.1 million tons, accounting for nearly 63% of the total Turkish scrap imports. The EU region reported nearly 20% jump in scrap export volumes to Turkey during this period. In second place was the CIS region, which exported 2.1 million tons of scrap. The US was the third largest scrap supplier. The scrap imports from the country declined sharply by over 8% over the previous year to total around 2 million tons, thereby accounting for 15.5% share of total Turkish imports.

Meantime, exports of steel by Turkey soared by more than 11% to 12.4 million tons during the initial eight-month period of 2017. This is upon comparison with the exports of 11.2 million tons recorded during Jan-Aug in 2016.Among various product categories, exports of long products totaled 6.3 million tons, declining sharply by 9.2% over the year. A 67% year-on-year jump in exports was witnessed in flat rolled products exports which totaled 2.9 million tons. The exports of Semi-finished steel products skyrocketed by 280% to 625,000 tons during the initial eight-month period of 2017.

On the other hand, Turkish steel imports dropped considerably by over 18% to 10.3 million tons. The imports of semi-finished steel tumbled by 36% year-on-year to total 2.9 million tons. During the same period, flat rolled steel imports declined sharply by 5.5% to 5.8 million tons, said TCUD data.

Turkey produced 25.6 million tons of finished steel products during the first eight months of the year. Long steel production declined marginally to 17.2 million ton. But flat steel production surged higher by nearly one-fifth to 8.4 million tons.

The Turkish consumption of finished steel declined marginally by 1.7% to 23 million ton. Consumption of flat steel decreased by 1.2 pct to 11.2 mln tons YoY.