Turkish Scrap Imports Plunged 26% in January

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Turkey’s ferrous scrap import volumes plunged during the month of January this year. The imports were down sharply by over 26% from the same month a year before. The country’s imports totaled 1.239 million tons, down significantly by 26.4% when compared with the imports of 1.683 million tons in January 2018. The imports registered significant decline when matched with 1.628 million tons imported during December 2018, said TUIK data.

The top supplier of ferrous scrap to Turkey in Jan ’19 was the U.S. The imports from the U.S. totaled 214,398 tons, accounting for 17.3% share of the total scrap imports by Turkey during the month. The imports from the U.S. have declined by almost 45% over the previous year. In second place was the Netherlands with an import market share of 15.5%. The imports from that country totaled 192,055 tons, registering a jump of nearly 49% year-on-year. The third largest scrap supplier was Russia, whose supplies totaled 181,722 tons in Jan ’19. The Turkish scrap imports from Russia dropped sharply by nearly 15% when compared with January 2018. The above top three suppliers together accounted for 48% of Turkish scrap imports.

The other key import sources were Germany (155,850 tons), the UK (100,143 tons), Belgium (80,237 tons), France (66,848 tons), Romania (60,870 tons) and Denmark (60,656 tons).