By Brian Taylor, Recycling Today
The 12th 2020 batch of imported scrap quotas issued by the Solid Waste & Chemicals Management Centre of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China will let in a relatively generous amount of material compared with some previous ones.
The 12th batch, announced Sept. 17, allows more than 730,000 metric tons of recovered fiber to enter through Chinese ports, plus more than 135,000 metric tons of red metal scrap, more than 120,000 metric tons of aluminum scrap, and just 2,600 metric tons of ferrous scrap.
China’s economy is farther along a post-COVID-19 rebound curve compared with most other nations, and its government has targeted infrastructure spending as a major components of its economic stimulus efforts.
The second-half 2020 rebound, combined with the strict quota system for scrap in China, has put a strain on raw material supplies there. One symptom has been a boost in the importation of semi-finished and finished metals in a nation that more often is considered an exporter of such materials.
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The most recent batch of quotas with its higher numbers is similar to the ninth batch, issued in early July, which saw some 200,000 metric tons of aluminum scrap welcomed in as the nation prepared for its economic rebound. The 10th and 11th batches, however, together only letting in about 3,700 metric tons of aluminum scrap.
The nation’s government, led by its Ministry of Ecology and the Environment (MEE), has been attempting to lead China’s basic materials producers away from imported scrap. Plastic scrap has largely been banned, while recovered fiber will be severely restricted if not banned in 2021. Metals producers in China appear to have had some success in getting higher grades of scrap metal declared as “resources” allowed to be imported, although that system has not been finalized.
China’s seemingly protectionist stance toward imported scrap has been identified by the Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) as a set of actions that are in violation of the country’s World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations.
