Russian Federation

The global economic crisis that began last fall has inspired a new trend in the market sale of non-ferrous metals. Demand for base metals is very down, pulling the other and prices. In the Russian Federation negative trends were even more dramatic than in the rest of the world. By November last year the largest Russian metallurgical enterprises of very much reduced purchase prices for ferrous scrap. Even in such large industrial enterprises, as NLMK and Severstal, the purchase price of non-ferrous metals were reduced by 10-15 dollars a ton. Contributed by foreign partners and Russian companies – saturation of Western companies with raw materials and lack of demand in the international market led to a new spiral of falling prices. Just a few weeks after the onset of the global financial crisis, prices paid for the vast majority of scrap metal fell to a bracket of $ 150 per ton.

As a direct consequence of this situation is the fact that at railway stations in various cities have accumulated considerable amount of unloaded wagons with colored metals. The most acute, this situation was evident in St. Petersburg, where the idle time of more than 5,000 cars from non-ferrous metals. In such circumstances, the purchase of metal actually stalled. Fortunately, later conjuncture has somewhat improved and the surplus colored metal slowly began to come true for suppliers with respect to reasonable prices. Despite this success, the prices for base metals remain low, forcing many providers who work in the field of metallurgy, incur substantial losses. Currently, foreign companies importing Russian crude, have large reserves of ferrous metals – for To use them, they will need at least several months. Also, certain negative contribution to the current situation has made the growth of freight rates.

As a result of these developments, the market conjuncture of nonferrous metals was very unfavorable, as it is currently packed with domestic suppliers of non-ferrous metals to the eyeballs, virtually do not sign new deals in anticipation of rising prices and do not carry scrap metal. Nevertheless, wait for it will probably have quite a long time, because at this point in the market there is absolutely non-ferrous scrap the obvious cold, and abrupt changes in a positive direction in the near future is not expected necessary. In conclusion, it should be said that the steel industry, in particular the purchase of scrap metal market, has become one of the most affected sectors of the financial crisis the global economy. Russian managers steel companies can only hope for the best and expect the crisis.