RMDAS figures show April recycled steel price drops
The value of heavy melting steel fell below $400 per ton, according to mill purchasing figures collected by the price tracking service.
Steel mills in the United States paid from $15 to $20 per ton less for obsolete scrap grades in late March and the first 20 days of April, according to transaction figures collected by the Raw Material Data Aggregation Service (RMDAS) of Pittsburgh-based MSA Inc.
During the late March and early April time frame, processors and sellers of recycled steel were able to fetch roughly the same price for prompt industrial scrap (new production scrap such as No. 1 busheling, No. 1 bundles and No. 1 factory bundles) as they did during the prior 30-day period.
However, the benchmark obsolete grades tracked by RMDAS—No. 2 shredded scrap and No. 1 heavy melting steel (HMS)—dropped by $17 and $21 per ton in national average value respectively. The No. 1 HMS grade had an average purchase price of $387 per ton.
The price declines occurred despite demand from domestic mills remaining steady and even rising.
According to the Washington-based (AISI), in the week ending April 18, 2026, steel production in the U.S. reached 1.848 million tons, a figure that is 9.7 percent higher compared with the 1.684 million tons produced one year earlier.
The most recently calculated weekly span also involved a milestone of sorts, with the U.S. mill capability utilization (capacity) reaching 80.0 percent—a target identified by the administration of U.S. President Donald J. Trump.
On the supply side, scrap processors likely experienced increased recycled steel inflows in March and April as disruptive severe winter storms subsided, bringing a rebound in demolition, construction and other obsolete scrap generating activities.
At least one scrap processor took to the LinkedIn platform to question why recycled steel lost value in March and April.
Ken Schutt, chief operating officer of Kimmel Scrap Iron & Metal Co., Detroit, asked in an early April post, “Why is there talk of the April scrap market being so soft?”
Regarding the notion of a “need to restore historical spreads between primes and shred/cuts,” he wrote, “Don’t let history dictate the market, let the market dictate the market.”
Schutt says conversations between buyers and sellers this spring also made references to steel mill maintenance outages. “Based on the information that I have gathered, the outages for April and May range from two to seven days. It sure doesn’t seem like the outages will be very impactful.”
The recycler also notes that EAF steel producers in March and April continued to raise their prices for finished and semi-finished steel, citing price hikes by Nucor Corp., Gerdau and Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI).
The export market for recycled steel generated in the U.S. also may fit into this spring’s price equation.