The Week in One Page — Week of 15 August 2026
Bottom Line
Scrap prices into Turkey moved four times this week and ended almost exactly where they started. The action is in Europe, where scrap sellers cut home prices 3% to 5% — push your European suppliers now.
5 Things You Need to Know
- Turkey’s main scrap price went up, down, flat, then down. It ended at $375 per tonne.
- Four cargoes sold on Monday and pushed the price up. No more sold, so it slid back down.
- German and Austrian scrap dealers cut prices by 10 to 15 euros per tonne in a single day.
- That cut happened even though the Rhine river is too low for barges. Weak demand beat the shipping problem.
- New York scrap prices rose 2.3%. Shipping got cheaper, not because buyers paid more.
Top 3 Actions This Week
- Press European suppliers on price. WHEN: Monday or Tuesday. PRICE: German scrap is near 275 to 280 euros per tonne. WHY: their home market fell while Turkey stayed flat, and dealers expect further falls this month.
- Get written shipping quotes before quoting a delivered price. WHEN: Monday. PRICE: our quotes are a month old. WHY: no lane has been re-quoted in nineteen working days, and war-risk charges still apply.
- Get a written buying offer from Pakistan. WHEN: this week. PRICE: the published number is $413 per tonne, four days old. WHY: we are pricing that market on an assumption, not a real bid.
Why Prices Moved (and Other Changes)
Four real cargoes sold on Monday, so the published price jumped. Nothing sold after that, so it drifted back down. One day of deals now holds the price up for about three days, then it fades. In Europe, steel mills shut for summer holidays and cut output, so demand dried up faster than supply. Shipping through the Gulf got riskier after two tankers were attacked, and no line has dropped its war-risk charge. Pakistan also started a new electricity tax on its steel mills, but we do not expect it to change what they pay for scrap.
What to Watch Next Week
- Does a real cargo sell above $380 per tonne? Futures point there, but no cargo has traded that high yet.
- Do European scrap prices keep falling? Dealers there expect more cuts before month end. That decides how hard we push in September.
- Does the Pakistan price refresh? It has not updated since 11 August, and will be reported half as often from September.
Plain-English Glossary
- Cargo — one shipload of scrap, usually 20,000 to 30,000 tonnes, sold as a single deal.
- Published price / benchmark — a reference price reporters work out from real deals.
- Futures — a contract to buy at a set price later; a market bet, not a sale today.
- War-risk charge — an extra fee shipping lines add for sailing through dangerous waters.
- Barge — a flat river boat; how most German scrap reaches the coast.
For the full ranked list, see Watchlist Priorities.