A crackdown on the quantities of waste included with scrap material imported into China has created a global glut in scrap supply, pushing down achieved prices in the European ferrous and non-ferrous markets.
China submitted a document to the World Trade Organization in July last year informing the group that it would no longer take in any "foreign garbage" alongside commodities, including such as slag from steelmaking and many kinds of waste wool, ash, cotton and yarn.China has pushed for a decrease the acceptable threshold for such "carried waste" to 0.3% across all commodities imported into the country.As well as pushing down global scrap prices, carried waste poses a problem for non-ferrous scrap producers and shredders around the world, especially in scrap grades that contain an assortment of different elements such as zorba, because of China's status as a major consumer of those grades.There has already been a material decrease in the imported volumes of other non-ferrous scrap metal. Metal Bulletin calculated late in April that China's copper scrap import quotas were already down by 84%.Scrap tsunamiAlong with the hostile trading environment between...