TDC Ventures

Daily Market Note — 2026-10-12

3 min read

Daily Market Note — 2026-10-12

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

The read

Pakistan’s imported shredded market has no openly visible numeric price this Monday. Two public Pakistan shredded assessments carry stale dates with their values withheld: SMM’s ISRI 211 CFR Port Qasim page is dated 9 October and BigMint’s Europe-origin containerised CFR Qasim entry is dated 7 October. The Friday 9 October print of the CFR Port Qasim shredded price (Fastmarkets, index MB-STE-0887) sits behind the publisher’s subscription. With no concluded trade surfaced either, the sensible read is that old trade levels are history, not today’s executable price. This week’s dominant event is policy, not price: the EU consultation on authorised destinations for its waste exports closes on 16 October.

Key moves

  • Pakistan imported shredded — no public numeric assessment or verified concluded trade dated 12 October.
  • Older price references — an offer range of $440–445/MT that circulated in earlier commentary traces back to a January 2024 article and is not a 2026 price.
  • Port Qasim — the Port Qasim Authority’s 12 October berth report shows container handling at terminal QT2-II alongside coal, soybean, palm oil, fuel and ethylene cargoes. It is an activity snapshot, not evidence of any particular shipment clearing.

Freight and shipping

  • Hormuz — a 12 October maritime situation report describes continuing severe disruption, but its attack and transit figures combine secondary reporting and model-assisted analysis and are not independently verified. The public Gulf navigation-warning count is unchanged at 19; it measures formal warnings, not transits or attacks.
  • No new container surcharge reported. Weekend geopolitical headlines do not by themselves translate into carrier surcharges; war-risk, bunker and routing charges need written carrier or insurer confirmation. Maersk’s 20% emergency fuel surcharge, effective 12 October, applies to qualifying UK and Ireland inland transport, not to ocean freight.

Supplier markets

  • EU — the European Commission’s draft list of non-OECD countries authorised to receive EU waste stays open for comment until 16 October 2026. The draft Pakistan assessment addresses ferrous and non-ferrous waste and raises serious concerns about authorisation. The general new controls are scheduled to apply from 21 May 2027, subject to final country and waste authorisations. This is a draft, not final law.
  • UAE — Dubai Customs Notice 13/2026 (selected scrap export codes) passed its initial 8 October end-date. No public cancellation or renewal notice has been verified; exporters should confirm status directly before relying on UAE-origin supply.
  • Alternative origins — with EU supply uncertain beyond 2027, UK, North American and other legally available origins are the obvious places buyers will compare.

Non-ferrous snapshot

An LME-focused weekly review published 12 October reports changes for 5–9 October of zinc +2.6%, copper +2.0%, lead +2.0%, aluminium −1.7%, tin −1.9% and nickel broadly unchanged. These are reported weekly changes, not fixing prices, and daily LME official values should be used for any pricing. Match contract fixing dates and references on both sides of a trade.

Glossary

  • CFR — cost and freight: the seller pays ocean freight to the destination port; the buyer carries insurance and transit risk.
  • CFR Port Qasim shredded price (MB-STE-0887) — the Fastmarkets index for shredded scrap delivered to Port Qasim, Pakistan’s main deep-water import terminal near Karachi.
  • ISRI 211 — the US scrap-industry specification for shredded steel scrap.
  • Non-OECD authorised-country list — the EU list of non-OECD countries permitted to receive its waste exports under the revised Waste Shipment Regulation.
  • LME — London Metal Exchange, the benchmark venue behind most base-metal scrap pricing formulas.

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