Blog

As we experienced our dusting of snow this past week it made me realize that our last blog occurred when the thought of anything below 30 degrees was an eternity away!  However, here we are there are number of items to briefly touch on.

Fall Clean Up

Since Thanksgiving, we have experience 25+ degrees to below zero.  Not to dwell too much on the weather, but as the ‘Starks’ keep on reminding us, ‘Winter is Coming’.  If your shop, business, farm, property is in need of bins to help remove the clutter that have been building all year, give us a call and we can set you up.   Best to get the rubbish and misc. scrap out before the snow flies and buries it again for another year.

Market News

We are continuing to experience a lot of noise and volatility in the market place.  Although I would suggest that pricing in general is still very healthy, it would be fair to say that there is now a clear disconnect between scrap metal pricing and new material – whether ferrous or non-ferrous.

Tariffs and trade wars continue to disrupt the market and the flows of scrap materials. A major looser in this has been aluminum.  Prior to China banning the importations of scrap metal, a lot of lower grade materials that required additional sorting and handling tended to end up in China, such as the aluminum bi-product from shredding tin and cars (called ‘Zorba’ and ‘Twitch’).  Now this material is staying in the local North American market, and smelters are beginning to use this product, which is a lower grade alum product, as a substitute input in their aluminum melts.  In short, this has caused the price of prime grade alum scrap material to falter, as there is not need for the higher priced material in the mill’s melts.  

As with the aluminum scrap taking a ‘hit’ relative to the LME market price, we are also seeing ferrous scrap rangebound with export markets drying up due to tariff pressures on the imported steel.  We are noting that our customer’s new steel pricing has continued to rise to levels not seeing in the past, where as scrap metal pricing is not longer moving in tandem with these price increases.  I suspect that  this situation will continue until tariffs are removed or the export market finds a new growth market for their steel products to increase offshore demand for scrap.

Joseph News

If you haven’t been around our yards, please come and visit.   We have recently put into operation a new material handler with a twist.  Our new Fuchs 350 excavator is state of the art with a quick connect option that allows the crane to operate as a shear or a material handler/loader.  From safety to efficiencies, this machine will ensure that we are serving our clients needs and we are doing so in an environmentally responsible way, as our machine is equipped with a Tier IV engine exhaust system. 

Enjoy the fall and stay tuned for our next update!