n° 169 – December 2020

As explained in Ma Hongchang’s report above, it was announced on October 19 that it would be possible to export recycled brass, copper and cast aluminium alloy raw materials to China with effect from November 1 this year, if they meet the required standards. Also on October 19, the 13^th batch of import quotas released by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s Solid Waste and Chemical Management Center included 5980 tons of copper scrap, 340 tons of aluminium scrap and 1340 tons of steel scrap.

Then on November 24, the same ministry released an announcement confirming January 1 2021 as the effective date for China’s complete ban on imports of solid waste, following on from the “Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Wastes” passed by the National People’s Congress.

There is a discussion suggesting that China may allow ferrous scrap imports in the near future but, at the time of writing, no official announcement or details have yet been announced.

While the scrap import quota system remains in place until the end of 2020, more units are expected to be traded under the new import standards and classifications, thus easing the bottleneck of global scrap trading with the Chinese market and enabling a new balance to be found. Since traditional CCIC pre-inspection is no longer required, details of enforcement inspections at Chinese ports under the new standards are still to be clarified and so there may be a slight delay before it is fully in force.