Electric Furnaces Raise Scrap Buy Price in Tokyo

Electric furnace steel makers around Tokyo increased the ferrous scrap purchase price slightly last week. The price could increase gradually when the makers finish the summer time maintenance outage in September. The price leader of Utsunomiya plant of Tokyo Steel Manufacturing increased the purchase price by 500 yen to 27,000 yen per tonne for H2 grade on Thursday. Some other local makers followed the move. Their averaged purchase price is around 26,000 yen for H2. The makers keep the outage until September. However, they are expected to increase the scrap purchase price after the outage to increase the output. They will keep the price for a while keeping watching the market condition when some makers are still in maintenance outage.