Activity in Turkey’s scrap market cooled towards the end of last week after a flurry of bookings.

No booking was heard on Friday as Turkish mills completed July-shipment purchases with the deals concluded in the first half of the week.

Prices for HMS 1&2 80:20 stood at $389/tonne cfr Turkey from the US, at $383-387.5/t cfr from the EU and at $385/t cfr from the UK in the latest bookings.

Market participants expect Turkish producers to take a breather before starting to purchase August-shipment scrap cargoes, and to gauge steel sales in the meantime.

A supplier tells Kallanish: “I am not expecting prices to improve further in the near future. Mills have almost completed their urgent requirements and are now trying to complete missing tonnages from the short sea.”

Another supplier says: “I am expecting a period of silence now. The current decline in billet prices coupled with insufficient steel sales are likely to impact scrap pricing and demand. Today, there are billet offers from China at around $510/t cfr Turkey. These will push scrap prices down.”

An EU-origin supplier, however, does not expect billet values to impact the scrap market. “We have our own fundamentals. Besides the current weakness in flow, approaching holidays and summer heat are likely to further hamper supply. We should also have an eye on rivers, which are likely to run dry. I am expecting scrap prices to remain firm,” he explains.

Although the euro strengthened to $1.072 a day earlier, it depreciated to $1.069 on Friday business close, meanwhile.

A trader adds: “We should be eyeing US suppliers. In June, export prices strengthened while domestic fell. Now, we are expecting another price decline in July trading in the US domestic market. Turkish producers will want to narrow the spread between US domestic and export prices. At that point, US suppliers will be more vulnerable.”

In the short-sea market, the latest Romania-origin scrap was sold at $370/t cfr Turkey on Friday.