RALEIGH METAL RECYCLING
METAL COMMODITIES AND RECYCLING REPORT
June 8, 2015
2310 GARNER ROAD
RALEIGH, NC, 27610
This
is the Commodities and Recycling report, brought to you by BENLEE the industry
leader in roll off trailers and open top scrap trailers, as well as Raleigh and
Goldsboro Metal Recycling, the leaders in North Carolina for Scrap Metal,
Cardboard, Electronics and Junk Cars.
Today
is Monday, June 8, 2015. My name is Greg
Brown, President and CEO of the companies.
Overall
the economy continues its slow growth around the world. Last week the U.S. had a very strong jobs
report and car sales in the U.S. had their best month since July 2005, almost
10 years ago. Related with the slow
growth in the U.S., the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, took down their forecast
of U.S. growth and urged the U.S. not to raise interest rates in 2015.
Steel Production
While ferrous production came down a bit last
week, it has been trending up for months and is now nicely up from its April
multi year low. Related a group of U.S.
steel mills filed anti-dumping charges against foreign steel mills, due to the
flood of imported steel. As the U.S. economy
continues to gain strength and with imports of scrap metal flat, the low prices
of scrap metal causing low incoming rates to scrap yards caught up with the
market.
As
was forecast about a week ago, the increase in ferrous pricing became a
reality, with prices up $20 to $30 a Gross ton, the first real increase in
months. While this increase is significant,
the question is, will it be enough to help reverse the enormous drop in material
coming into scrap yards.
Oil Rig Count
Steel consumption in the U.S. is not getting a
lot of help from oil drilling, which until last year consumed enormous amount
of metal. Last week was the 26th
consecutive weekly decline in the oil rig count in the U.S. The good news is with oil now up almost 50%
from the multi-year low of a few months ago, the oil rig count is close to stabilizing,
but Business Insiders’ graph is nothing other than ugly.
Aluminum Prices
While scrap steel has had its first increase
in months, Aluminum has been a totally different story. Prices are at more than a 5 year low.
Aluminum Stock levels
Imports and last year’s high inventory levels caused some of
this decline. Aluminum inventory levels
having hit multi year highs about a year ago are now at 5+ year lows. Based on these new inventory lows and the
U.S. Dollar having weakened a bit in recent weeks, we would expect Aluminum
prices to stabilize in the coming weeks.
Copper Prices
Copper
after having hit a multi month high about a month ago has been declining for
weeks, having dropped about 25 cents in the past three weeks. Of course with China continuing to slow, and
50% of the world’s copper consumed there, we see no major increase in copper prices
coming any time soon.
We
were in Las Vegas for the annual Waste Expo show last week. Almost all the news there was positive for equipment
suppliers. The major drag on the waste
industry is that recycling for the companies like Waste Management is not
profitable and they are not investing in the recycling part of their business. Waste is OK, but recycling is a problem due
low commodity prices. These continued low
profits caused one the major metal recycling companies in the Midwest, PSC to announce
new site closings. In the past 30 days
many scrap metal companies have closing sites and shutting down shredders.
Prices
for Aluminum and copper have come down this week in Raleigh and Goldsboro.
With that we hope all have a Safe and Profitable
week. Tune in next week for the Commodity
and Recycling report.
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| Steel Production |
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| Oil Rig Count |
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| Aluminum Prices |
