Bureau of International Recycling issues the February issue of Ferrous World Mirror

The entire range of commodities, from oil to scrap ferrous metals, experienced a huge contraction in demand in 2015, with the result that commodity prices fell to their lowest multi-year level. China's overproduction and exports have also had a negative impact on world markets.

Demand for steel scrap remained weak in the EU. India reported increased activity in the international scrap trade during the year. Domestic plant orders showed modest improvement in the US. Scrap prices have even slightly increased recently, as bad weather conditions restrict the flow of scrap metal supplies. Russian exporters benefited from the weakening ruble. The collection of scrap steel in Ukraine fell to 4.3 million tons, while exports jumped to 1.217 million tons, which caused problems for local producers, who experienced a constant shortage of this raw material in the break year.

Scrap metal use fell sharply by 13.1 percent in Turkey and 10.7 percent in Japan over the past year. South Korea's scrap utilization rate fell 8.2 percent. On the other hand, the use of steel scrap increased slightly, by 0.5 percent, in the countries of the EU-28 region.