BDSV offers short-term and longer term views

The Germany-based Federal Association of German Steel Recycling and Waste Management Companies (BDSV), in cooperation with two other trade groups, has issued a synopsis of recent ferrous scrap demand in Germany while also urging the nation’s government to mandate recycled content for metal used by major industry sectors.

The short-term figures, collected in cooperation with Germany’s Federal Association of Secondary Raw Materials and Disposal (BVSE), portray 2023 as a year when German crude steel production fell by 3.8 percent, to 35.4 million metric tons.

However, while the output of blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace (BOF) fell by less than 1 percent, largely recycled-content electric arc furnace (EAF) steel production fell "drastically" by 10.8 percent, according to the associations.

As a result, scrap purchases by steel mills fell by 8.6 percent within Germany, falling from 12.8 million metric tons in 2022 to 11.7 million metric tons last year.

In Germany in 2023, EAF’s market share of total crude steel production was just 27.7 percent, a sharp difference from the nearly 70 percent rate achieved in the United States.

In 2023, the share of scrap in crude steel production fell by more than two percent compared with the year before, with BDSV and BVSE placing it at 42.3 percent.

Combining the steel industry and Germany’s foundry sector, the two groups say that overall, steel scrap consumption decreased by 7.4 percent in 2023 compared with the previous year in Germany.

One potential means of improving that circumstance is backed by the BDSV along with the Berlin-based Association of German Metal Traders and Recyclers (VDM).

In a joint statement, those two groups refer to a recent presentation by German Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Dr. Robert Habeck on the concept “Lead[ing] Markets for Climate-Friendly Raw Materials.”

“The associations welcome the fact that the paper explicitly emphasizes that the recycling of secondary raw materials can be promoted by a future label that shows the proportion of recycled material, such as the scrap content of steel,” the associations say.

“For green products we need green metals and for green metals we need processed steel, aluminum and copper scrap. This is where our companies come into play, supplying steel and metal plants with recycled raw materials in the desired quantity and quality through comprehensive collection and high-quality sorting.”

Habeck’s proposed measures include the labelling of climate-friendly raw materials, a definition of “green” steel, incentives through public procurement and the examination of possible pricing of emissions that are not yet covered by the EU emissions trading system in place.

BDSV says the use of steel scrap instead of iron ore leads to a saving of 1.67 tons of CO₂ per ton of steel scrap used, and in the case of stainless steel scrap, the saving is as much as 4.30 metric tons of CO₂ per metric ton produced.