"Brazil still has not become an export country in steel scrap. We have received innumerable consultations and believe in the possibility of establishing our presence with a foreign company to make exports more feasible," Bueno said.
Brazil is known for the quality of its iron ore and steel, but has not made much headway in exporting scrap metal.
"The quality of Brazilian scrap metal is highly competitive and companies have come to adopt ISO 9001 [quality assurance certification]," Bueno said.
Sindinesfa considers insufficient logistics and transport infrastructure to be the biggest obstacles to exports. "We are just held up by some things that involve investments in ports, which could be overcome by import-export initiatives taken in conjunction with the federal government," the official said.
Other measures that would increase the sector's competitiveness are a reduction in taxes on production, including the PIS/Confins levies, he said.
Brazil's steel industry, notably long steelmakers, continue to be the sector's largest consumers, purchasing 4.27Mt of scrap metal in 2002. Foundries bought another 611,000t last year.
Bueno said that prices have been declining on the domestic market but he expects them to recover soon as demand picks up.
The country's scrap metal industry is comprised of some 2,500 firms that process about 480,000t of metal a month. BN Americas