Signs hint at potential recycled steel demand rebound

The United States and global economies alike have exhibited growth in 2025 as measured by gross domestic product. The steel industry, meanwhile, continues to be buffeted by trade and geopolitical factors that can leave steel recyclers uncertain just where their market stands.

The impact of back-and-forth tariff activities in the U.S. and widely perceived steel industry overcapacity in China have been well-documented.

While the word “volatility” has been applied to the tariff process and its effects, in the recycled steel market, pricing volatility largely has been absent.

From May through August, prices for benchmark grades of recycled steel—prompt, shredded and heavy melting steel (HMS)—traded on the domestic market in a narrow $3-per-ton range, according to tracking performed both by Davis Index and the Raw Material Data Aggregation Service (RMDAS) of MSA Inc. 

Some processors, buyers and sellers of recycled steel have enjoyed the narrow trading range as noted by SA Recycling CEO George Adams in his market perspective prepared this summer for the Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling (BIR).

“Mills and dealers have enjoyed both steady business and market liquidity, and there’s nothing wrong with that scenario," Adams says.

As the world pays greater attention to commerce after summer vacations and holidays, those who think they can benefit from rising recycled steel prices could see reasons for optimism in the second week of September.

On the domestic steelmaking front (which represents by far the largest recycled steel market for the U.S.), the Washington-based American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) has reported positive mill output figures for the week ending Sept. 6.

During that week, steel output in the U.S. measured 1.795 million tons, up 7.7 percent compared with mill output in the same week in 2024, according to AISI.

Adding to the good news, the 1.795 million tons produced in the first week of September represents a 1.5 percent increase compared with the previous week ending Aug. 30.

During the week ending Sept. 6, mills were operating at a capability utilization (capacity) rate of 79.2 percent, according to AISI, which compares with a 75.0 percent capacity rate one year earlier.

In addition to the potential for increased domestic demand inherent in those numbers, price tracking from India and political lobbying in Turkey could point to increased demand for recycled steel in those two nations. (Turkey historically is the leading destination for outbound U.S. ferrous scrap, while India in the past few years has emerged as the second leading destination.)

Reporting and price tracking conducted by Davis Index this week indicate buyers of containerized ferrous scrap shipped to more than one Indian port are willing to pay $3 per metric ton more for several different recycled steel grades, compared with the previous week.

While those prices have been offered to shippers in the United Kingdom and the European Union, the increased bids signal a revival of scrap demand in India, where construction activity (and rebar steel demand) had slowed during the spring and early summer.

Ferrous scrap demand conditions in Turkey widely have been reported by media outlets and tracked by satellite tracking service Navigate Commodities as having been influenced by the amount of steel billets and slabs imported from China and other nations.

Navigate Commodities says such shipments into Turkey reached a temporary peak in June before declining in July. However, in a mid-August LinkedIn post, Navigate Managing Director Atilla Widnell says satellite monitoring showed a rebound in billets and slabs headed toward Turkey in late summer.

Widnell says when rebar prices decline in China, as they did in early August, Chinese steel traders almost instantly react by offering billets and slabs made in China, Indonesia and Malaysia to buyers in other parts of the world.

“Steel mills with rerolling lines will soon notice these attractively priced semis waiting in the corner of the dance floor,” Widnell writes of Turkey.

Not all links in the Turkish steel supply chain seem happy about the circumstance, however, based on early September comments from the Ankara-based Turkish Steel Producers Association (TCUD).

The secretary general of the TCUD, interviewed by news agency Anadolu Ajansı (AA), expressed his concern about rising finished and semi-finished steel exports from China, Russia, India and other nations in Asia.

The AA report has TCUD and its Secretary General Veysel Yayan characterizing some of those imports as “cheap and substandard steel products” that are supported by state subsidies, create unfair competition and reduced capacity utilization in Turkey.

Yayan says Turkey’s imports of steel from China have increased tenfold since 2020, and he related to AA that the U.S. and EU had introduced barriers to help address the situation in their market regions.

The report also quotes Turkish steelmaker CEO Uğur Dalbeler of Colakoglu Metalurji as being in favor of imported steel trade restrictions, saying, “If measures are not taken, the Turkish steel sector will suffer irreparable damage.”