According to the October report released by Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) on global scrap consumption and trading data for the first half of this year, in the given period the EU-28, the world’s leading scrap exporter, exported 8.6 million mt of scrap with a 15.2 increase year on year. In the January-June period of this year, the leading scrap export destinations of the EU-28 were Turkey with 5.01 million mt (+14.1 percent year on year) and India with 958,000 mt (+29.1 percent year on year).
In the first six months of this year, the US exported 5.9 million mt of scrap, falling by 14.5 percent compared to the same period of last year. This decrease resulted from a 24.4 percent drop in scrap exports to Turkey (totaling 1.5 million mt), a 49.3 percent drop in scrap exports to Taiwan (599,000 mt), a 13.6 percent fall in scrap exports to South Korea (408,000 mt), a 32.8 percent slide in scrap exports to China (273,000) and an 18.4 percent decrease in scrap exports to Thailand (230,000 mt), all year on year. On the other hand, in the given period, US scrap exports to Mexico increased by 47 percent, exports to India rose by 35.7 percent, exports to Canada grew by 7.9 percent, exports to Peru went up by 30.5 percent and scrap exports to Pakistan surged by 45.5 percent, all year on year.
In the first half of this year, Japan’s scrap exports increased by 15.6 percent year on year to 4.77 million mt. In the given period, South Korea’s scrap imports from Japan rose by 10.4 percent and Vietnam’s scrap imports from the same source grew by 71.1 percent, whereas scrap imports of China and Taiwan from Japan decreased by 15.7 percent and 9.6 percent respectively, all compared to the same period of last year.