German trade groups object to export ban proposal

The Berlin-based Association of German Metal Traders and Recyclers (VDM) and the Düsseldorf, Germany-based Federal Association of German Steel Recycling and Disposal Companies (BDSV) have issued responses to comments made by a German aluminum producers trade group.

According to VDM and BDSV, Rob van Gils, president of the Aluminium Deutschland trade group as well as managing director of metals producer HAI Hammerer Aluminium Industries, has made remarks in support of potential export bans on recycled metals.

“While we expressly share the desire to strengthen Germany as an industrial location, we consider such demands to be the wrong way to go—especially at a time when the order situation in Germany is extremely tense for many companies in the recycling industry,” VDM and BDSV say.

“We have to build bridges, not walls,” adds VDM President Murat Bayram, who also works for metals recycling firm EMR Ltd. “Our goal was and is to find solutions together with the metal producers to improve the tense situation in the industry, but a bridge can only be built if both sides are willing to build their part.”

The trade group says numerous VDM member companies are currently unable to sell any material because demand from melt shops in Germany has fallen significantly.

Additional restrictions such as export bans would further exacerbate this situation and jeopardize not only investments in recycling technologies, but also the approximately 300,000 jobs that the circular economy secures in Germany alone, says the group.

VDM and BDSV say considerable experience and research demonstrates that recycled metal export bans cause more harm than good.

Regarding the nature of scrap export, VDM says recent research aggregated by the Brussels-based European Recycling Industries' Confederation (EuRIC ) has shown that European exports of recycled metals are not increasing, but remain at a stable, low level.

Rather than enacting export bans, VDM and BDSV recommend loosening export restrictions on some materials and creating a system that issues emissions-reduction certificates for processors of recycled materials processed in the European Union.

Allowing buyers and sellers of recycled metals in the EU to benefit from an emissions reduction system would reward companies that recycle and produce in Europe, instead of punishing them with export restrictions, according to VDM.

Bayram says metals recyclers throughout Europe should make their voices heard in Brussels.

“We could achieve much more in Brussels for our industry and for the producers if we joined forces instead of overwhelming each other with demands for bans,” he says. “Only if we work together to reduce bureaucracy, legal certainty and incentives for climate-friendly raw materials will Europe remain competitive as an industrial location in the long term."