NatSteel sees little scrap business impact

SINGAPORE - National steel miller NatSteel Ltd said on Tuesday Singapores liberalisation of the scrap vehicle market will have minimal impact on its scrap supply and steel operations. In response to a newspaper report that it would lose its monopoly over scrap, NatSteel clarified this was not true. It said its subsidiary Materials Recycling Pte Ltd scraps an average of 40,000 to 50,000 vehicles including motorcycles a year, yielding up to 10,000 tonnes of scrap. "This is about only 1.5 percent of NatSteels annual raw material requirement for steel making in Singapore. The main sources of scrap are shipyards, metal and construction industries and imports," NatSteel said in a statement. It added that Materials Recycling did not have monopoly over scrap in Singapore. There were 11 other large scrap collectors in the city state. NatSteel ended at S$2.03, down six cents on unusually high volume of 10.35 million shares on Tuesday. Story by Angela Tan REUTERS NEWS SERVICE