The Week in One Page — Week of 8 August 2026
Bottom Line
Scrap prices into Turkey stopped falling and settled at $375 per tonne, where real cargoes actually sold. Sellers in Europe took the whole price cut this week, so push your suppliers now rather than waiting for buyers to move.
5 Things You Need to Know
- A price benchmark that had not moved for seven days finally dropped $2.76, landing at $375 per tonne.
- It moved because three real cargoes sold at that exact price. The deal came first, the benchmark followed.
- Sellers absorbed the pain. Scrap leaving the UK fell nearly 2%, and scrap leaving Rotterdam fell 1.7%.
- Buyers in Turkey paid the same price all week. The cut landed on sellers, not on mills.
- Iron ore jumped and fell more than 4% in three days. Scrap ignored it completely, both times.
Top 3 Actions This Week
- Check what cargoes are really selling for into Pakistan. WHEN: Monday, before quoting. PRICE: the public benchmark sits at $414.91 per tonne. WHY: reports suggest material cleared near that level while sellers held lower asking prices.
- Push European and UK suppliers on price. WHEN: Monday to Tuesday. PRICE: UK scrap leaving port is $333.05 per tonne, down $6.60. WHY: their own selling price fell, so they have room to move that buyers do not.
- Get shipping costs in writing before quoting any delivered price. WHEN: immediately. PRICE: no verified route cost exists right now. WHY: one shipping figure used last week turned out to be unreliable, and a wrong freight number wipes out the whole margin.
Why Prices Moved (and Other Changes)
Three real cargoes sold at $375 per tonne, so the published benchmark dropped to meet them. That is unusual. Normally the benchmark leads and deals follow. Iron ore is the raw material most people watch as an early warning. It fell more than 4%, then rose more than 4%. Scrap ignored it both times, so that signal is not working now. Pakistan also added a new tax on steel mills based on electricity use, backdated to July. That raises costs for the mills buying imported scrap.
What to Watch Next Week
- The next reported cargo sale. The benchmark followed a real deal by one day this week. A fourth sale below $375 per tonne confirms prices are still falling.
- Whether one publisher’s price range finally moves. It has stayed the same for ten straight reports and has never confirmed its own upper half.
- Pakistan’s benchmark. It has not updated since 4 August, and the publisher plans to report it half as often from September.
Plain-English Glossary
- Benchmark / index — a published reference price, based on real deals that reporters collect from the market.
- Cargo — one shipload or container load of scrap sold as a single lot.
- Tonne — 1,000 kilograms, the standard unit for scrap pricing.
More detail: Watchlist Priorities