If you didn’t see the world change last week, you probably see it clearly! The world keeps moving forward and the scrap world is doing the same. We’ve seen a lot of major news articles talking about steelmakers holding more material in the US, and this could mean that long-term prices could be better for the scrap steel and iron markets.
On the other hand, copper continues to surprise us with a strong rise last week and if it still stands, we moved it to the sell category. We have seen the non-ferrous markets record a strong uptrend and overall we are seeing a very stable and strong 2022 sign.
Non Ferrous Prices
Last week, we saw an additional $0.12 added to the markets as copper prices increased. On top of that, further electrification of the auto market and rising commodity prices led to strong outlooks for 2022.
We also see that aluminum prices continue to rise and strengthen as market demand continues to rise. We think markets will continue to remain strong and we see a very strong market overall for all of 2022, excluding massive price drops 15 to 20 times a year.
Iron Prices
As oil strengthens, we should start to see steel prices rise as well. Markets have been much less warm to iron prices in the past month and a half due to the large pullbacks and backups in domestic steelmakers.
On top of that, you are experiencing major disruptions in major steel processing countries like Turkey and India, not only because of the current COVID issues, but also because of political and economic issues.
Looking forward, we don’t expect much increase in January or February, but as oil prices continue to rise, we expect these markets to start rising towards the end of February and March.
Iron Price Chart of the Week
Don’t be surprised to see an increase in stainless steel prices of around $0.05-0.10 per pound in the first 2 to 3 months of this year. The market has shown tremendous interest in restarting the aviation industry as long as we can get more people to travel again. This will cause the aerospace and other high temperature industries to see further increases in nickel-based metals as well as precious metals.
Catalytic Converter Prices
We’ve seen a nice rebound in all three major precious metals pricing markets over the last 2 to 3 weeks. We’re starting to see a shortage of sawdust support itself, causing automakers to engage in high production rates. This has caused catalytic converter prices to rise again as the pending material is needed again and will result in a higher average price per cat for the rest of the month and into 2022.
