Metal recyclers struggling through ‘a very tough year’

Global – 2015 has been ‘a very tough year’ in which the ‘bad economic climate’ has led to adverse effects on companies’ budgets and employment plans, according to the BIR non-ferrous metals division’s president David Chiao of the Uni-All Group in the USA.

Addressing the divisional meeting in Prague last week, Nick Rose of UK-based Tandom Metallurgical Group echoed these same sentiments in his world market summary. ‘It was never going to be the year of plenty but the most pessimistic of bears couldn’t have foreseen the constant downward spiral of 2015,’ he lamented.

Billet exports from China ‘at ever-decreasing prices’ had been ‘truly the cause of the present condition of ferrous scrap values’, stressed BIR ferrous division president William Schmiedel of Sims Metal Management in the USA. ‘The good news,’ he added in Prague, ‘is that the lower prices we are experiencing today should enable our customer base to again start to look at ferrous scrap as a reasonable, viable and economic option.’

At the BIR stainless steel & special alloys committee meeting, its chairman Joost van Kleef of Oryx Stainless described 2015 ‘as one of the most challenging years to date for the stainless steel recycling industry’.

Recycling International will carry full coverage of the BIR world recycling convention in its November issue.