TDC Ventures

Daily Market Note — 2026-09-23

4 min read

Daily Market Note — 2026-09-23

Market commentary on the global ferrous scrap trade. Not trading advice.

The read

Wednesday brings a new data point rather than a new price: Shanghai Metals Market launched a daily Pakistan shredded assessment, though no public numeric value was visible by the research cut-off. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz stayed well below average, but the session-on-session move was milder than earlier in the week, while Saudi Arabia’s restarted oil pipeline continued its multi-week recovery and oil prices rebounded intraday.

Pakistan’s imported shredded market remains anchored around $418/MT CFR Port Qasim, with a recent verified range of $417–420/MT. No fresh physical transaction dated 23 September was publicly verified. A separate published index reported Pakistan imported scrap staying below $420/MT, consistent with the standing range. Port Qasim’s shipping programme continued to show active vessel movements.

Key moves

  • Pakistan imported shredded — no new transaction; anchor near $418/MT CFR, range $417–420/MT; a published index confirms the market stayed below $420/MT.
  • New benchmark: Shanghai Metals Market began publishing a daily Pakistan shredded CFR Port Qasim assessment today, alongside the existing weekly and twice-weekly indices already covering the route.
  • Port Qasim operations — the port’s daily shipping programme lists active container, petroleum, LNG, coal and edible-oil movements; no cancellations reported.
  • Currency and fuel — the Pakistani rupee’s latest interbank close is 277.20 per US dollar; both petrol (to PKR 392.05/litre) and diesel (to PKR 418.96/litre) eased together for the first time this week.

Freight and shipping

  • Strait of Hormuz: Reuters reported three trackable commodity vessels transited on Tuesday, down from four on Monday and well below the ten-day average of about fifteen — continued impairment, though a smaller session-on-session move than earlier in the week. One ballast LNG tanker reappeared inside the strait after an absence of several days.
  • Bab el-Mandeb: recorded twenty-two commodity-vessel transits, against a ten-day average of about twenty-six.
  • Saudi pipeline: the East-West oil pipeline remained in operation following its restart, with full recovery still estimated to take six to eight weeks. Oil prices rebounded almost two percent intraday after touching two-week lows earlier in the week.
  • Reading the signals together: a pipeline restart and a rebound in oil prices should not be read as evidence that container freight, insurance, or war-risk costs into Pakistan have normalised — those remain separate and elevated, and every open freight quote should be reconfirmed before fixing.
  • Port Qasim: the latest public shipping programme shows active vessel movements and no listed cancellations.

Supplier markets

  • Regional divergence: scrap markets diverged across South Asia, with Turkish prices staying firm while Indian buying slowed and India’s own ferrous scrap index eased further on cautious steel-market sentiment.
  • UAE: Dubai’s temporary restriction on specified ferrous, copper and aluminium scrap exports remains relevant through 8 October 2026 unless changed, exempted or renewed.
  • EU: the current European Commission draft would exclude Pakistan from EU metal-waste export authorisation after 21 May 2027 if adopted unchanged. The consultation remains open, so this is a draft position, not current law. EU exports of e-waste to non-OECD countries are already prohibited.

Non-ferrous snapshot

Three-month LME copper traded around $14,700/MT, having touched $14,833/MT earlier in the session before pulling back. Aluminium traded around $3,260/MT, zinc around $3,889/MT, lead around $1,927/MT, nickel around $16,570/MT, and tin around $54,250/MT. Shanghai Metals Market reported base metals mostly lower at midday.

Glossary

  • CFR — cost and freight; the seller pays ocean freight to the destination port, the buyer carries insurance and transit risk.
  • Port Qasim — Pakistan’s main deep-water import terminal, near Karachi.
  • Shredded (ISRI 211) — processed scrap of consistent size and density, the main containerised grade into Pakistan.
  • LME 3M — the London Metal Exchange’s three-month forward reference price, the standard benchmark for base-metal scrap formulas.
  • Non-OECD waste-shipment rules — EU regulations governing which countries outside the OECD may receive specified waste exports, including scrap metal, from EU member states.

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