Dive Brief:
- Chinese Customs agents released import numbers for June showing that China imported 3.7 million tons of scrap commodities, including metal, paper and plastics. The month showed a slight decrease from May volumes.
- China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) was assigned the task of eliminating the overcapacity in provinces throughout China.
- The China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association Recycling Metal Branch (CMRA) said the government of China will continue to monitor overcapacity across numerous metal production sectors.
Dive Insight:
According to CMRA, the value generated by 350,000 unprocessed copper and copper products that were imported in June totaled $2.65 billion.
MIIT will monitor volumes in various metal-production sectors including 19 million tons of iron, almost 30 million tons of steel, 420,000 tons of electrolytic aluminum and copper smelting and 512,000 tons of lead smelting.
In 2013, Upstate Shredding opened a new scrap metal recycling facility in Port of Albany, NY. The company ships scrap metal collected on site to locations around the world. A portion is sent to China, although the exact amount exported is unknown.
In June, a Chinese recovered commodity company announced a contract with Tucson, AZ. The American company will ship about 100 ocean containers of recycled paper material per week. The Port of Tuscon has the capacity to expand exponentially, as it is equipped to handle 400 containers on a weekly basis.
