Chinese Nonferrous Metal Recyclers Aim 12MT Production by 2015

Vice Secretary General of China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, Pan Wenju gave a speech at a metal recycling conference in China on Thursday and showed a vision to increase production of recycled nonferrous metals to 12 million tonnes in China during the country’s twelfth five-year plan until 2015. The industry plans higher recycled nonferrous metals to meet the domestic demand expansion for nonferrous metals.

Chinese recycled nonferrous metals production totaled 8.35 million tonnes in 2011, including 2.6 million tonnes of recycled copper, 4.4 million tonnes of recycled aluminium and 1.35 million tonnes of recycled lead. The production increased by 7.7% from 2010 and kept the growth since 2002. The production is expected to keep increasing. In 2015, recycled copper is forecasted to account for 40% in China’s total recycled nonferrous metals production and each 30% for recycled aluminium and recycled lead.

Mr. Pan pointed out Chinese nonferrous metal recyclers have hoped sufficient volume of material supply and improvement of metal recycling system but domestic scrap dealers cannot meet the demand. As a result, the recyclers are forced to rely on imported scrap. Value-added tax on Chinese recycling industry is 83.7% higher than the figure in 2009. Mr. Pan said recyclers are suffered from high tax and high operating cost. He said increase of scrap collecting cost is 7-8%.He also suggested Chinese recycling industry should be integrated and enlarged more when small and middle class recyclers are suffered from very low profitability. They cannot depart from low value businesses with insufficient monetary resource for R&D, he insisted.

In China, collection volume of nonferrous metal scrap increased by 11.8% to 4.75 million tonnes in 2011 from 2010, including 1.2 million tonnes of copper, 2.2 million tonnes of aluminium and 1.35 million tonnes of lead. The country’s import of nonferrous metal scrap increased by 2.8% to 7.41 million tonnes including 4.69 million tonnes of copper.