The scrap import market in Vietnam has weakened in tandem with international markets. Import buying interest is sluggish amid falling prices, trading sources tell Kallanish.

“No one wants to buy,” a trader says. Mills have enough stocks so they can wait and observe market movements, he adds.

In Vietnam, buying interest is muted, local trading sources say. A regional trader heard containerized HMS 1&2 80:20 scrap from the USA was recently booked at $295/tonne cfr Vietnam, but local market sources say the market is quiet and they have not heard of any recent deals.

“Mills have postponed making purchases now,” a Hanoi trader says. This was due to slow finished steel sales and the dropping price of scrap. He last heard bulk HMS 80:20 from US and Australia offered last week at $335-340/t cfr Vietnam but was not sure where prices were for this week.

Bulk scrap prices had reached “…some really crazy levels when the market was hot,” says a trader in Ho Chi Minh City. He even heard $370/t cfr Vietnam offered in early September and was unable to confirm a rumoured deal at $352/t cfr Vietnam at that time. Containerized 80:20 from Australia, meanwhile, was heard ordered at $310-315/t cfr Vietnam.

The most-recent Korean bulk scrap booking was concluded around the third week of September for US material, for mid-November arrival, at $344/t cfr Korea HMS I basis.

Japanese H2 grade scrap is currently offered at around $320/t cfr Vietnam. “These offers are from traders offering short sales cargoes. The Japanese market price is still high,” the Hanoi trader says. "The speed of the decrease in the Japanese scrap is slow, unlike that in the Turkish market," a Vietnamese buyer observes. He thought that suppliers would soon do more price discounting because many traders contacted his mill on Monday.