Egypt emerges as major rival to Turkey for European ferrous scrap, but can it continue?

Egypt emerges as major rival to Turkey for European ferrous scrap, but can it continue?
Published by:Lee Allen<>
10 Jun 2025 @ 08:20 UTC

Egyptian steel mills flocked to the import market for ferrous scrap in May, providing a major competing outlet to the bellwether Turkish market. Several deep-sea cargoes were heard sold to Egypt last month, Fastmarkets heard on Monday June 9, with one Turkish trading source estimating that there had been at least eight bookings to the country.
A scrap exporter source said last week that he had recently heard that three Belgian cargoes, sold by two different companies, were booked to the country in May.
Stronger buying from Egypt last month constrained the supply of European scrap available to Turkey, and was pushing up prices to the country, according to a Turkish trader.
Average deep-sea import prices during May were heard at $345-350 per tonne CFR Egypt for HMS 1&2 (80:20), according to both the Turkish trading source and an Egyptian steelmaker source, which largely tracked prices in the Turkish market over the period.
Appealing import prices Imports of scrap into Egypt have gone up because of higher US dollar reserves and favorable pricing, an Egyptian steelmaker source said on May 29.
US dollar availability has improved in Egypt, so the banks can now easily allocate dollar funds to [steel] mills, he said. And scrap imports are much, much cheaper than local scrap – a difference of no less than $70-80 per tonne.
A second mill source agreed with that description of the market, adding that local material becomes even more costly when considering its inferior quality.
Imported scrap is always better and has a higher yield, such as 80:20 or 70:30. Local material is poor and does not even reach 60:40, the second steelmaker source told Fastmarkets.
The same source pointed out that stronger steel export activity from Egypt was also helping demand in that country, in the absence of local buying. Egypt’s rebar and rod exports under HS code 7214 came to 605,603 tonnes in 2024, according to UN Comtrade statistics, up by 58.9% year on year.
A UK scrap exporter source said on June 9 that Egyptian buying had started the year slowly, but that demand had picked up over the past month to six weeks.
One reason for the reduced buying at the beginning of the year was that one mill had a problem with a transformer system at its plant, he said.
Although he acknowledged that there had been higher bookings recently, he contested whether Egypt had actually bought eight cargoes last month.
There would be a huge problem at the ports if so many cargoes were coming. Eight is too many [for Egyptian infrastructure to cope with], he said.
Egyptian influence Egypt’s influence in the global scrap markets has been growing amid a record-breaking volume of scrap imported in 2024, together with rising steel output over the year.
The country imported 4.05 million tonnes of scrap in 2024, according to UN Comtrade data, up by 12.8% year on year from 3.59 million tonnes in 2023.
In contrast, the globe’s largest importer, Turkey, took in 20.04 million tonnes of scrap in 2024, according to data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK).
But although total volumes to Turkey dwarf those to Egypt, data showed greater competition in tonnages of scrap from both Belgium and the UK, the two largest suppliers to Egypt.
Egypt imported 1.76 million tonnes of scrap from the UK in 2024, with 1.08 million tonnes bought from Belgium.
Over the same year, Turkey bought 1.33 million tonnes from Belgium and 2.22 million tonnes from the UK.

Construction output was also forecast to surge in the country, providing a boost to steel and scrap demand, data from Oxford Economics showed.
Value-added construction output was forecast to hit $36.68 billion in 2030, according to Oxford Economics, a rise of 24% from a forecast $29.63 billion in 2025, and with an average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.4% in the intervening period.
Egypt is a developing nation and will be around for a while, and there are also quite a few large steel mills there, the UK source said.
But despite the growth in Egypt, mills in Turkey were unlikely to go toe to toe with Egyptian buyers and compete on price to secure materials in the foreseeable future, he added, due to Turkey’s much larger presence in the market.
Regulatory changes There were also major concerns over the future of importing European scrap metals into Egypt given major changes under the revamped Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR).
The EU revised its WSR in May 2024, intending to restrict exports of European scrap metal classified as waste to non-member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Export rules will come into force by May 2027.
The European Commission confirmed that 24 nations outside of the OECD, including Egypt, submitted applications in February 2025 to continue to receive non-hazardous EU waste, in compliance with the revamped WSR.
A decision on the countries allowed to take these materials was expected by November 2026.
Should Egypt not receive clearance to continue to receive ‘waste’ materials from EU countries from 2027 onward, this would be highly disruptive to importers of scrap cargoes in the country, Alexander Kershaw, senior analyst at Fastmarkets, said. This would probably raise demand for materials from the UK and North America instead.