China issues additional scrap import quotas

The Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) reports that the People’s Republic of China has issued its fifth batch of scrap import quotas.

April 10, China’s Solid Waste & Chemicals Management Centre of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment published the most recent batch of waste import quotas for 2020. (The list is in Chinese but can be translated by web browser.)

According to the Solid Waste and Chemical Management Centre, 222,020 metric tons of copper scrap, 191,100 metric tons of aluminum scrap, 3,700 metric tons of steel scrap and nearly 1.17 million metric tons of paper scrap have been permitted to enter China.

The new quotas bring the total scrap imports permitted to enter China to date to 527,660 metric tons for copper, 475,549 metric tons for aluminum, 8,820 metric tons for ferrous and nearly 4.39 million metric tons for recovered fiber.

Additionally, the Chinese government has allowed importers of recyclables from the U.S. to apply for tariff exceptions for these scrap imports.