German mills discontinue scrap pricing survey

A regular monthly scrap pricing survey compiled from data collected at Germany’s steel mills has been discontinued by steel federation Wirtschaftsvereinigung (WV) Stahl at the end of 2015.

The survey has existed longer than the monthly survey by recyclers’ federation BDSV, which is compiled from input by scrap merchants. Often, the surveys’ results gave diverging information.

“The amount of publicly accessible price information has risen in recent years. Given the selection of such sources we have decided to stop our investigations in this regard,” WV Stahl tells Kallanish by way of explanation.

Market players from the scrap collecting industry had often argued that the prices given by WV covered only parts of the industry and were therefore not representative. “Apparently, two or three mils had stopped participating in those statistics,” one market source tells Kallanish. Others argue that the monthly average figures were overlapping and thus did not reflect the market adequately. They bemoan the fact that the prices were used as a basis for calculation by the automotive industry, or to define scrap surcharges in the past.

When WV Stahl announced that it was discontinuing its service, some mills had temporarily considered setting up a scrap pricing service themselves in recent months but this has not happened. “It is not all that easy. BDSV needed two years before it got its service up and running properly,” one source says. BDSV’s data are double-checked by an external institute which crops statistical outliers to arrive at credible figures, the source adds.

Kallanish