Early Shredded Scrap Sales for January Up $15 to $25

The first couple of days of January did capture a few sales of shredded scrap into the Midwest/Ohio Valley markets. Early reports are a number of orders were taken to the domestic steel mills at higher numbers ranging from a low of up $15 to a high of up $25. This is at the low end of the projected range dealers were forecasting just prior to the beginning of the year.

One New York based shredding operation advised SMU they sold two lots of shredded, one to Steel Dynamics at up $20 per gross ton and one to Nucor at up $15 per gross ton.

Another owner of scrap yards on the east coast advised SMU that there have not been a lot of deals made yet:

Some deals have been done but not a lot.  Mills are saying, well maybe we don’t need that much scrap, or I am getting a lot of offers.  There is a perception that dealers want to sell because it’s January, but the irony is that dealers aren’t holding a lot of scrap to sell and some are even saying they are having difficulty filling December orders.  

But at this point prime grades appear to be trading in the $460 range and shred looks like it’s around $445 – $450 in the OH Valley, which puts the m-o-m increase at up $25 or so.  It’s still early.

We’ll have to wait and see how trading goes into next week to gauge real demand and then whether dealers can actually timely full the orders they take.  

SMU will continue to watch the scrap markets and will advise later this week where prices ultimately settle for January.