Ever so slowly, ferrous scrap market conditions are brightening. Scrap processors report a slight rebound in prices for industrial scrap in the first months of the new year, due in part to an increase in export demand from Chinese and South Korean mills. More important, domestic steel prices, which have been stuck at their lowest level in 20 years, are rising slowly and are up about 10 percent since the first of the year. Threats of import restrictions have reduced the flood of foreign steel arriving in the U.S., and the high number of domestic mill closures last year has resulted in higher capacity utilization among the surviving companies.
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