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ISRI 2019 ConventIon & expo
China not ‘self-sufficient’
in supply
China’s exit from some copper scrap
markets will lead to greater US cop-
per consumption and the manufac-
ture of more copper-containing
products, according to Tim Strelitz
of brass and bronze ingot-maker
California Metal-X. But he also said
China could yet re-enter the copper
scrap market.
Jason Schenker, president of Prestige
Economics, said China was not yet
self-sufficient in copper scrap and will
not be so for ‘quite some time’. Randy
Goodman of Greenland (America) said
he believed the flow of scrap into
China would continue, perhaps with
the country reclassifying furnace-ready
material as something other than
scrap.
The experts named several barriers to
the return of US secondary copper
smelting: the two-to-three-year start-
up time, questionable ROI, permitting
challenges, interstate transportation
costs that can be higher than export
costs and the ‘tragedy of Chemetco,’
Strelitz said. ‘Because of that facility
becoming a so-called Superfund site,
cleaning up pollutants, the permitting
procedure for a secondary smelter or
refinery is tougher.’ His company,
CMX, recently purchased and is
about to restart the former Colonial
Metals ingot-making facility in
Pennsylvania.
scrap upgrade
Chinese export restrictions and tariffs
have resulted in more US investment
in equipment to upgrade scrap and is
stimulating processors to be more cre-
ative, said Jurgen Van Gorp of recy-
cler and refiner Metallo in Belgium.
Strelitz agreed that remaining profit-
able ‘is a function of being innovative
and recognising where the industry is
going’.
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