Nonferrous News

NOT IN SHIP SHAPE

There are export markets for nonferrous scrap brokers to reach—if they can find room on a ship for their shipment.

Scrap metal brokers are reporting long waits on the eastern seaboard in particular for containerized nonferrous shipments heading to China and other Asian destinations.

“Demand is good and our Chinese clients are still buying a lot of material, but we’re just having a hard time getting it over there,” says one East Coast broker. “It seems like there is not enough shipping capacity, and often scrap is getting bumped aside by other things,” notes the broker, who has found the same conditions up and down the eastern seaboard.

Shippers may also have grown weary of changing Chinese customs regulations in regard to scrap, and may be electing to avoid seeing entire ships caught up in delays caused by one or two containers of scrap. Whatever the causes, the result is a backlog of nonferrous scrap building at some ports.

“First they were saying the middle of May, now they’re saying even the end of May,” for shipments to finally be loaded, the broker remarked in mid-April. “They keep pushing it back.” Thus far, the broker has not run into any cancelled deals, “but the consumers definitely want them sooner rather than later.”

Some shippers have begun to divert scrap shipments by rail to Pacific ports in hopes of catching an earlier trans-oceanic route.