US inundated with scrap metal due to weak demand in Turkey

Turkey's economic turmoil has led to a sharp drop in US scrap metal imports, causing its landfills to sprawl.

Turkey is the world's largest consumer of scrap steel, so demand from that country is essential to keep the firms doing business in the United States. But amid the economic crisis, Turkish demand is disappearing. Scrap imports from the United States, Turkey's leading supplier, fell 18 percent to 4.9 million tonnes over the past year. This means that scrap that was intended for use in Turkish steel plants remains in the United States and is looking for buyers.

Scrap import prices in Turkey are down 3.8 percent this week from a year earlier and are now at $ 377 per tonne. Turkey became the largest importer of US scrap in 2008, eclipsing China, and now buys about 20 percent of global trade. Most of Turkey's metallurgical industry uses electric arc furnaces, which make steel by melting scrap.

And China's demand for the same may dry up after the country begins to generate its own sphere of recycling cars, appliances and other consumer goods.

The US exports billions of dollars worth of scrap steel a year, more than double the volume of the world's second largest exporter, Japan. US scrap traders are now looking for new markets and say they are used to uncertainty. Traders who sell scrap metal to Europe and the Middle East bear the brunt of the downturn.