In a hotel lobby crowded with scrap market participants, a typical pick-up line one would hear at the conference, held October 13-15 in Budapest, was: “Are you buying?”
Scrap metal sellers are currently finding it unusually tough to destock after China implemented a quota system to limit its imports of ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal, as well as imposing tariffs on US-origin scrap.
Trying to divert scrap metal to markets other than China, one favored destination could be Europe, home to major copper scrap buyers including Aurubis,...