Turkey Expected to Drive Ferrous Market

During the recently concluded spring convention of the Bureau of International Recycling, speakers at the association’s Ferrous Division meeting discussed the trends taking place in the ferrous market. An area showing great opportunities, according to several speakers, is the growing Turkish market. One speaker notes that Turkey’s crude steel production can be expected to climb by around 15 percent this year, while capacity increases are likely to be driven by electric arc furnaces. This will lead to higher scrap consumption in the future.

“Despite stable growth in domestic scrap collection, Turkey’s need for imported scrap is expected to rise significantly in the medium term,” according to Veysel Yayan, secretary general of the Turkish Iron & Steel Producers’ Association. According to his forecast, Turkey’s scrap consumption could jump from 21.4 million metric tons last year to around 30 million metric tons by 2012, of which around 75 percent will be imported.

Adding to the overall expected strength in the Turkish market, Ugur Dalbeler, general manager of the Turkey-based firm Çolakoglu Metalurji, notes, “We can only generate 25 percent of our scrap needs.”

On another positive note, the Worldsteel Association’s latest global outlook suggests apparent steel use will increase 10.7 percent to 1.241 billion metric tons this year following a steel use contraction of 6.7 percent last year.

Apparent steel use in the EU slumped 35.2 percent last year and demand in 2010 is set to remain below 2007 levels in the major developed economies, it was reported by divisional Vice President Ruggero Alocci of Italy-based Alocci Rappresentanze Ind. The EU’s steel production is predicted to jump 20 percent this year to 167million metric tons - well short of the peak of 210 million metric tons recorded in 2007 and even the year 2000 total of 193 million metric tons. The first-quarter improvement in EU steel production reflected “progressive restocking” rather than demand growth, he added.

Blake Kelley, Sims Group Global Trade Corp., notes that steel prices in the United States have been generally steady or increasing, thanks in part to improved demand from the automotive and oil industries. Order files for the U.S. construction steels sector have also recorded notable gains while plate mills are reporting full order books for the next 60 days. Overall, he was optimistic about U.S. steel demand remaining consistent for the summer.

Kelley adds that scrap buyers in China are maintaining a cautious approach because of concerns over the possibility that their government will restrict residential construction and economic growth.

Andrey Moiseenko of the Russian firm MAIR predicts that domestic scrap collections will be “significantly higher” this year, but that volumes available for export will remain “quite limited”. A consumption increase by mills in the Ukraine, meanwhile, led to a shortage of scrap on the domestic market by the end of April, he says.

BIR’s Ambassador for the Indian Sub-continent Ikbal Nathani of the Nathani Group of Companies expects India’s crude steel production to increase by 8 percent this year to 65 million metric tons, with significant capacity expansions expected to come on stream between 2012 and 2014 to raise annual capabilities to around 110 million metric tons.

Two guest speakers at the Ferrous Division Meeting, Tsunefumi Nakatsuji, president of the Japan Iron & Steel Recycling Institute; and Martin Abbot, chief executive of the London Metals Exchange, discussed steel and ferrous scrap trends this year.

Nakatsuji notes that Japan holds more than 1.3 billion tons of scrap reserves, which grow a further 15 million tons every year. Abbot discussed how scrap is envisaged as one of the beneficiaries of the exchange’s steel billet contract launched two years ago.

Following the ferrous division meeting, representatives from the Shredder Committee meeting, chaired by Jens Hempel-Hansen, H.J. Hansen Recycling Industry of Denmark, held a panel discussion focused on deriving maximum value from shredder residues and on processing innovations in this field.

Jean-Philippe Fusier , managing director for France-based MTB Recycling, outlined the development of MagPro - an eddy current separator working on a vertical axis that is capable of sorting pieces of non-ferrous metal measuring less than 10mm from fine automotive shredder residue.

Mike Dines, director of Operations at Chinook Sciences Group in the UK, described his company’s RODECS system as “the only commercially-proven gasification technology available that can ensure complete gasification of virtually any feedstock, irrespective of heterogeneity”.

Pierre-François Bareel of Belgium-based Groupe Comet talked of a project designed to prove that an integrated, low-temperature and low-emission process can help to push the recovery rate for an end-of-life vehicle beyond 95 percent - the EU legislation target figure for 2015.

Shredder Committee delegates in Istanbul also heard from Ferdinand Kleppmann, president of the Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP), who argued that viable and environmentally sound treatment of the shredder light fraction could be enhanced in such plants through further lowering of the pollutant content and enhanced materials recycling in reprocessing facilities.