Australian steel industry calls for banning scrap exports

The Australian Steel Institute (ASI), the peak industry body representing the Australian steel supply chain, called on the government to ban the export of unprocessed ferrous scrap earlier this month, Mysteel Global learned.

"Steel scrap is a sovereign and increasingly scarce and valuable resource, and without a ban, Australian steel mills will fall short of being able to fully service the growing Australian construction and manufacturing sectors," the ASI said in its recent submission to the government's inquiry into the nation's waste reduction and recycling policies.

The restriction on steel scrap exports would also be consistent with the Australian government's policies and plans to continually reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to maintain sustainable development of the economy, according to the submission.

This is not the first time the ASI has proposed such action, Mysteel Global noted. Back in November 2022, the institute appealed to the government on expanding the nation's existing ban on export to include unprocessed ferrous scrap, so that domestic supply shortages of clean steelmaking materials would ease, according to a news release on the institute's website in January last year.

Australia exports some 1.07 million tonnes of unprocessed ferrous scrap annually, while the country's steelmakers need to source more than 500,000 tonnes of ferrous scrap from interstate and overseas suppliers, the ASI pointed out, noting that this was essentially adding to the carbon footprint of the steel supply chain.

The ASI believes that implementing the ban on ferrous scrap exports would yield significant benefits for the country's steel manufacturing capacity and decarbonization efforts.

"A ban on exports would free up an extra 800,000 tonnes of processed scrap to the domestic market, decrease our sector's GHG emissions by approximately 1.5 m/ts CO2e," said ASI chief executive Mark Cain.

For China's scrap market, the impact of the ban would be minimal though, as the quantity of steel scrap imported from Australia to China is quite small, as noted by Mysteel Global. During January-March of this year, China imported approximately 406.2 tonnes of ferrous scrap from Australia, accounting for just 0.5% of the country's total imports, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs.

Note: This article has been written in accordance with an article exchange agreement between MySteel Global and BigMint.