Market participants in China are increasingly confident that Chinese authorities will revive steel scrap imports into the country in 2021 following the release of new domestic scrap classification standards.
A draft of the new standards for ferrous and stainless scrap for China's domestic market was released late last month. Market participants expect these standards to be launched and implemented by the end of this year.
This is expected to make the
restart of significant volumes of steel scrap imports to China easier because the new classifications are designed to be close to international standards.
Simpler classification
The new standards divide ferrous scrap into five grades, namely heavy recycled steel materials, medium heavy recycled steel materials, small recycled steel materials, shredded recycled steel materials and bundled recycled steel materials.
Standards also list stainless recycled steel materials as one grade, according to the draft released by China's State Administration for Market Regulation in late October.
New specifications are listed as follows:
Heavy recycled steel materials
solid body with minimum thickness = 6mm or minimum diameter = 10mm
length < 1,500mm