The Week in One Page — Week of 1 August 2026
Bottom Line
Turkish scrap stopped rising and sat at $374 per tonne for four days. Iron ore then fell hard and shipping risk jumped, so hold your prices and re-check every freight quote.
5 Things You Need to Know
- Turkish scrap froze at $374 per tonne for four days. No mill paid more, so the rise was talk.
- Iron ore dropped $3.82 per tonne in one day — our biggest fall on record.
- Iran stopped or turned back six ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Shipping cost is now the main risk.
- Copper hit a record $13,800 per tonne. Our call that copper would beat steel scrap was right.
- The outside market report we buy quoted us stale steel prices as if they were current.
Top 3 Actions This Week
- Re-check every freight quote. Treat any quote issued before 31 July as void until confirmed. Do this before any offer goes out. The shipping incident happened after those quotes were priced, and a $500 charge per container adds about $19 per tonne.
- Refuse any price rise justified by “the market curve.” Do this on contact. The curve a seller may quote is $10 per tonne lower than the last one we checked. Ask them to name a real sale instead.
- Get one Pakistani buyer to put a bid in writing. Do this week. Six days have passed with no confirmed bid, and that one document settles the whole question.
Why Prices Moved (and Other Changes)
July’s rise came from shipping costs and war risk, not real demand. It stalled because no mill bought at the higher price. China then declined to announce new spending, so iron ore fell and dragged steel down. Late in the week Iran stopped ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which makes freight the main cost risk again. Two smaller changes also landed. Low water on the Rhine is disrupting German scrap deliveries. A new US order allows future export limits on old batteries and electronic waste, but not on ordinary steel scrap.
What to Watch Next Week
- The first Turkish price below $374 per tonne — that confirms the fall has started.
- Fresh shipping quotes. If they come back unchanged, the Hormuz incident did not reach our routes.
- A written Pakistani bid. Six days of silence tells us nothing either way.
Plain-English Glossary
- Tonne — a metric ton, 1,000 kilograms. Every price here is per tonne.
- Scrap — old steel collected for melting into new steel.
- Iron ore — the rock used to make new steel. It competes with scrap and pulls scrap prices along.
- Freight quote — a shipping company’s price to move a container, valid only for a set time.
- Market curve — traders’ bets on future prices. It shows mood, not actual sales.
Drill down: Watchlist Priorities · TDC Ventures — Forecast Track Record