TDC Ventures

Daily Market Note — 2026-09-21

3 min read

Daily Market Note — 2026-09-21

Market commentary on the global ferrous scrap trade. Not trading advice.

The read

Monday opens without a new Pakistan shredded print, so the market keeps leaning on the recent evidence. Oil flows out of the Gulf are recovering, but visible shipping through Hormuz is thin and freight conditions are not back to normal. Two changes in how the market is priced are coming: a new daily Pakistan shredded assessment starts this week.

Pakistan’s imported shredded market remains anchored around $418/MT CFR Port Qasim, with a recent verified range of $417–420/MT. No fresh physical transaction dated 21 September was publicly verified by mid-day Pakistan time. A publisher’s Europe-origin containerised shredded assessment is still dated 18 September with its value behind a paywall, and the same publisher describes South Asian imported scrap as firm.

Key moves

  • Pakistan imported shredded — no new transaction; anchor near $418/MT CFR, range $417–420/MT. Domestic Pakistani shredded sentiment was still described as weak, a split from firmer imported-scrap sentiment across the region.
  • Price sources — Fastmarkets now publishes its Pakistan shredded CFR Port Qasim index once a week, on Fridays. Shanghai Metals Market will launch a daily ISRI 211 shredded CFR Port Qasim assessment on 23 September, based on minimum 500 MT lots, US dollar letter-of-credit payment and delivery within four to six weeks. It will be a useful cross-check against physical trades.
  • Currency and fuel — the Pakistani rupee’s latest completed interbank close is 277.25 per US dollar; petrol is PKR 389.14/litre and diesel PKR 424.04/litre.

Freight and shipping

  • Strait of Hormuz: Reuters reported only twelve trackable commodity vessels transited over the weekend, down from thirty-five the previous weekend.
  • Oil workaround: Saudi crude exports have recovered above 4 million barrels a day so far in September, with shuttle and ship-to-ship systems keeping oil moving at exceptionally high freight cost. Lower oil prices and recovering exports should not be read as normalised container freight.
  • Carrier surcharges: the Far East peak-season surcharge and the Middle East → Pakistan emergency surcharge remain active.
  • Port Qasim: the latest public shipping programme shows active vessel movements and no listed cancellations.

Supplier markets

  • UAE: Dubai’s temporary restriction on specified ferrous, copper and aluminium scrap exports remains relevant through 8 October 2026 unless changed, exempted or renewed.
  • EU: the current European Commission draft would exclude Pakistan from EU metal-waste export authorisation after 21 May 2027 if adopted unchanged. The consultation remains open, so this is a draft position, not current law. EU exports of e-waste to non-OECD countries are already prohibited.

Non-ferrous snapshot

Three-month LME copper was around $14,530.50/MT on 21 September. Shanghai Metals Market reported base metals broadly firmer at midday, with copper, lead, zinc and nickel higher and aluminium lower.

Glossary

  • CFR — cost and freight; the seller pays ocean freight to the destination port, the buyer carries insurance and transit risk.
  • Port Qasim — Pakistan’s main deep-water import terminal, near Karachi.
  • Shredded (ISRI 211) — processed scrap of consistent size and density, the main containerised grade into Pakistan.
  • PSS / ECS — peak season surcharge / emergency contingency surcharge, temporary carrier charges added to base ocean freight.
  • LME 3M — the London Metal Exchange’s three-month forward reference price, the standard benchmark for base-metal scrap formulas.
  • Non-OECD waste-shipment rules — EU regulations governing which countries outside the OECD may receive specified waste exports, including scrap metal, from EU member states.

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