ISRI statistics says 70% of aluminium scrap in the U.S is consumed domestically

As presented during the 2016 CMRA (China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association Recycling Metal Branch) Annual Convention on 7-9 November in Guangzhou, China, recyclers in the United States, Japan and Europe are looking for domestic and export homes for scrap instead of sourcing them from China.

According to Mark Lewon, president of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) and nonferrous recycler with Utah Metal Works in the U.S, despite the Chinese scrap export boom, “most of the scrap processed in the U.S. is consumed domestically.”

As presented in Lewon’s statistics, for three of the major secondary commodities, domestic consumption volume in the U.S. is larger than the export volume. Ferrous scrap is the least export-dependent, with 83% of it consumed domestically.  It is followed by aluminium scrap with 70% domestic consumption and scrap paper with 59% domestic consumption.

As noted by Takaaki Yamamoto, president of the Japan Aluminium Alloy Refiners Association (JARA, the way China’s sources domestic scrap as feedstock and produces secondary aluminium is similar to the earlier pattern of Japan.

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Yamamoto said, “the businesses of recycling aluminium and other materials are a regional industry,” adding, “where there is any supply-demand gap, inter-regional trade occurs.” He also warned of a “risk of excessive competition associated with oversupply” as China continues to add new domestic aluminium capacity.

Salam Sharif, chairman of United Arab Emirates-based Sharif Metals International and president of the Bureau of Middle East Recycling, also raised questions on the sustainability of the current production levels of some metals in China. He cited the example of growing steel exports from China since 2010 causing an “overspill” of the metal in the rest of the world and suppressing global price levels.

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