Battered scrap market leads to 80 US yard closures

United States – Falling commodity prices and ‘multi-year lows’ in Chinese imports of aluminium and copper have had a dramatic impact on US scrap businesses, it was highlighted at the latest US Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) convention, held last week in Las Vegas.

US aluminium exports made a slow start to 2016, declining around 6% year on year in January. Worse yet, the US industry has shed around 11 000 jobs in the last year and suffered some 80 yard closures, confirmed Joe Pickard, ISRI’s chief economist and director of commodities.

Murat Bayram, managing director of EMR Germany, described the slump in the aluminium market in the context of the overall commodities rout. He was adamant that ferrous prices are having a strong influence on aluminium values, arguing that the former have dropped so far that small-time collectors aren’t picking up anything – be it ferrous or non-ferrous. ‘In some parts of Germany, we’ve seen as much as a 40% decline from small collectors,’ he confirmed.

A full report on the ISRI 2016 convention & trade show will be published in the May issue of Recycling International.