Cars kept longer in UK owing to low scrap values

United Kingdom – ‘€˜Fewer people are scrapping their old cars as the price they’€™d receive from scrap yards goes down each month,’€™ according to UK firm Motoring Research. Scrap values were 65% lower last month than in March 2015.

Recent data show that 70 445 cars in the UK were issued with a certificate of destruction in January 2016 compared to 82 265 in the opening month of last year. ‘This is a drop of 14%,’ Motoring Research points out.

The number of cars being scrapped hit a low of 64 081 in December versus a peak of 96 568 in January 2014. ‘When scrap prices initially dropped, we found that customers were holding on to their cars slightly longer than they usually would in the hope that prices would rise again soon,’ comments Alison Price of UK car recycling service CarTakeBack.

‘But inevitably people still need to scrap their car and, as it became apparent prices weren’t to rise again anytime soon, customers accepted that prices across the UK were at a low.’ More recently, there have been ‘signs of small increases’ in scrap metal prices in certain areas of the country.