Australian steelmakers call for scrap export ban

Trade association cites decarbonization goal as reason to keep Australia’s scrap on shore.

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Recycling Today archives

The Australian Steel Institute (ASI) is asking the nation’s government to place an export ban on what it calls “unprocessed ferrous scrap,” saying the material is “best used locally” to help steelmakers reach decarbonization goals.

The Pymble, Australia-based ASI says its sustainability national manager Michael Dawson made a presentation late last year to the Federal Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water requesting the ban because the domestic steel industry “has prioritized the increased use of scrap as one of the enablers in its decarbonization pathways.”

Dawson says higher scrap use decreases the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced in the iron and steelmaking process and reduces the sector’s reliance on iron ore and coking coal.

While spelling out the value of the material, in a seeming contrast Dawson also says the ban “would prevent the dumping of the hazard-containing material offshore.” Whether hazardous or valuable, Dawson said there was a shortage of ferrous scrap, with Australian steelmakers acquiring more than 500,000 metric tons annually of ferrous scrap “from a combination of interstate and overseas sources.”

“This is occurring at the same time as 1.07 million metric tons of unprocessed ferrous scrap is being exported from Australia annually," Dawson says. "As a result, we are confronted by a bizarre situation whereby locally we’re underutilizing our national scrap processing capacity as our steel mills are importing processed ferrous scrap, to meet increasing demand for steel, which is essentially adding to the carbon footprint of the supply chain and putting at risk our capacity to decrease our GHG emissions in the near term through insuring supply of adequate domestic scrap.” 

Dawson says making a change to existing Australian legislation banning the export of ferrous scrap would “reap significant benefit” for local steel manufacturing capacity and its decarbonization efforts. “It would free up an extra 800,000 metric tons of processed scrap to the domestic market, decrease our sector’s GHG emissions and prevent harm to offshore environment through banning the dumping of Australia’s unprocessed scrap ‘waste.’ It’s a win, win, win,” Dawson says.

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