Buyers of copper and aluminium scrap in the European Union
Recycling
Smelters, secondary refineries, remelters, rod mills and plants with their own melting, as well as scrap processors and traders from the Companies register – by metal, scrap grade, distance from the shipping point and country. For each plant: the company, the type of buyer, the grades accepted according to documents, sources with their class and a general description of the shipment procedure.
A picture of the market – not a commercial recommendation. No prices, ratings or rankings; ordered by straight-line distance or alphabetically. Contact through the company website; the register holds no personal data.
- 850
- buyer plants
- 615
- companies
- 30
- countries
- 396
- Cu – buyer plants
- 730
- Al – buyer plants
Data as of: · version 2.31 · verified at source up to · Dataset changes · Markdown · JSON · grade dictionary version 1.0 · Scrap code translator
Find a buyer
Choosing a metal shows all buyers of that metal in the register; a scrap grade narrows the list to plants whose documents name that grade. Shipping point – a click on the map, a NUTS 3 region or your browser location (it stays in the browser – it is not sent to the server).
Buyers
0 buyers
No shipping point – alphabetical order; distance and procedure appear once a shipping point is chosen.
Straight-line distance (great circle) from the shipping point – not road distance.
The list shows the first 150 of 0 buyers; the full result is in the export.
No buyers with these filters. A larger radius, the area “also GB, CH, NO, TR”, the type “both” or a search without a grade widens the list.
Export results:
CSV · XLSX · Markdown · JSON
The export contains the result for the filters in the address; distance only with a shipping point from a NUTS 3 region (a point from the map or from the browser is not sent to the server).
Shipment procedure
- Same country
- shipment within the country – national rules
- Other EU country
- shipment between EU Member States – green-listed scrap: Article 18 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1157, document in Annex VII
- Export from the EU
- export from the EU – provisions of Regulation (EU) 2024/1157 on exports from the Union and the rules of the country of import
The description of the shipment procedure is general and does not constitute legal advice. Legal status as of 20 October 2026: Regulation (EU) 2024/1157 of the European Parliament and of the Council on shipments of waste. The classification of the waste and the obligations of the parties are determined case by case.
Buyers in the register
Number of buyer plants by metal and type (a plant of two metals counts in both). The numbers are not market size or shares – they are register plants meeting the buyer rule.
| Metal | smelter | smelter – type of plant | processor | plants in total | companies | with a documented grade | in GB, CH, NO, TR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| copper | 30 | 82 | 284 | 396 | 259 | 84 | 53 |
| aluminium | 158 | 270 | 302 | 730 | 515 | 127 | 109 |
Buyers by country
Buyer plants by country and metal; the country name leads to the “metal × country” page.
| Country | Cu – smelter | Cu – smelter – type of plant | Cu – processor | Al – smelter | Al – smelter – type of plant | Al – processor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | · | 2 | 7 | 6 | 16 | 8 |
| Belgium | · | 1 | 14 | 1 | 6 | 14 |
| Bulgaria | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| Croatia | · | · | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Cyprus | 1 | · | 1 | 1 | · | 1 |
| Czechia | · | 1 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 5 |
| Denmark | · | · | 6 | · | 1 | 7 |
| Estonia | · | · | · | · | · | 3 |
| Finland | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| France | 3 | 11 | 22 | 17 | 41 | 22 |
| Germany | 8 | 23 | 25 | 25 | 48 | 26 |
| Greece | · | 1 | 4 | 5 | 8 | 4 |
| Hungary | · | 1 | · | 3 | 8 | 3 |
| Ireland | · | · | 1 | · | · | 2 |
| Italy | 5 | 15 | 19 | 22 | 44 | 22 |
| Latvia | · | · | 2 | 1 | · | 2 |
| Lithuania | · | · | 6 | 1 | · | 6 |
| Luxembourg | · | 1 | · | 1 | 1 | · |
| Netherlands | · | 1 | 15 | 2 | 3 | 14 |
| Norway (outside the EU) | · | · | 8 | 11 | 4 | 10 |
| Poland | 3 | 5 | 32 | 9 | 20 | 32 |
| Portugal | · | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Romania | 1 | 1 | 15 | 4 | 4 | 15 |
| Slovakia | · | · | 2 | 1 | 5 | 2 |
| Slovenia | · | · | 8 | 1 | 2 | 8 |
| Spain | 4 | 5 | 41 | 14 | 14 | 42 |
| Sweden | 2 | 2 | 7 | 4 | 5 | 7 |
| Switzerland (outside the EU) | · | 1 | 17 | 1 | 4 | 17 |
| Türkiye (outside the EU) | · | 4 | 5 | 7 | 16 | 5 |
| United Kingdom (outside the EU) | 1 | 1 | 16 | 10 | 6 | 18 |
EU scrap market
EU-27 scrap trade with non-EU countries (Eurostat Comext): imports and exports in tonnes, main partners. Scrap mass, not metal content; tonnes of copper and aluminium are not added up.
Copper scrap
Table of years (chart data)
| Year | of which from outside the EU (t) | of which to outside the EU (t) | Import unit value (EUR/t) | Export unit value (EUR/t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 570,304 | 843,290 | 3,559 | 2,831 |
| 2016 | 534,485 | 822,093 | 3,188 | 2,454 |
| 2017 | 517,357 | 873,180 | 3,676 | 2,961 |
| 2018 | 519,608 | 637,072 | 3,768 | 3,327 |
| 2019 | 554,208 | 696,487 | 3,696 | 3,107 |
| 2020 | 552,211 | 605,776 | 3,768 | 3,055 |
| 2021 | 529,241 | 678,606 | 5,119 | 4,543 |
| 2022 | 541,627 | 489,730 | 5,825 | 5,120 |
| 2023 | 451,492 | 531,200 | 5,540 | 4,891 |
| 2024 | 408,105 | 608,438 | 5,966 | 5,371 |
| 2025 | 476,276 | 648,532 | 6,330 | 5,652 |
| 2026 incomplete year: 2026-01/2026-08 | 319,196 | 492,141 | 7,824 | 7,078 |
Largest scrap suppliers (2025)
- United States 152,221 t
- Switzerland 70,043 t
- United Kingdom 67,738 t
- Norway 19,958 t
- Morocco 11,090 t
Largest scrap destinations (2025)
- China 309,896 t
- India 109,038 t
- Thailand 50,168 t
- Pakistan 26,076 t
- Japan 24,985 t
Unit value (EUR/t) – value divided by mass from trade declarations (Comext); an approximation of the price level, not a market price. CN codes: 7404 00 10, 7404 00 91, 7404 00 99 .
Source: Eurostat Comext – EU trade by CN8 (DS-045409), as of 2026-10-20. Balance = exports − imports. Comext
Aluminium scrap
Table of years (chart data)
| Year | of which from outside the EU (t) | of which to outside the EU (t) | Import unit value (EUR/t) | Export unit value (EUR/t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 465,295 | 679,385 | 1,257 | 1,221 |
| 2016 | 520,286 | 681,610 | 1,106 | 1,070 |
| 2017 | 567,587 | 717,534 | 1,257 | 1,194 |
| 2018 | 611,053 | 704,414 | 1,278 | 1,196 |
| 2019 | 665,746 | 834,518 | 1,124 | 1,028 |
| 2020 | 602,187 | 946,776 | 998 | 946 |
| 2021 | 563,142 | 1,114,384 | 1,406 | 1,368 |
| 2022 | 702,956 | 992,253 | 1,876 | 1,772 |
| 2023 | 607,586 | 1,165,920 | 1,580 | 1,545 |
| 2024 | 657,263 | 1,257,738 | 1,692 | 1,646 |
| 2025 | 652,372 | 1,277,301 | 1,788 | 1,774 |
| 2026 incomplete year: 2026-01/2026-08 | 462,043 | 853,182 | 2,149 | 2,139 |
Largest scrap suppliers (2025)
- Switzerland 158,719 t
- United Kingdom 113,738 t
- Norway 46,146 t
- Türkiye 34,172 t
- Israel 32,887 t
Largest scrap destinations (2025)
- India 382,981 t
- Thailand 149,624 t
- China 127,142 t
- Hong Kong 106,680 t
- Pakistan 103,840 t
Unit value (EUR/t) – value divided by mass from trade declarations (Comext); an approximation of the price level, not a market price. CN codes: 7602 00 11, 7602 00 19, 7602 00 90 .
Source: Eurostat Comext – EU trade by CN8 (DS-045409), as of 2026-10-20. Balance = exports − imports. Comext
Rules
- Buyer from the Companies register
- A scrap buyer is a register plant in a smelting link (smelter, secondary refinery, ingot caster, rod mill) or a processing link (recycling, shredding, granulation, e-waste recycling), with copper or aluminium, not closed, in the EU-27 or – as an option – in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway and Türkiye.
- Semi-finished product plants and foundries
- Rolling mills, wire drawing plants, extrusion plants and foundries with copper or aluminium are “smelter” buyers: scrap intake is inferred from the type of plant, not from a document – marked and can be excluded with a filter.
- Grade only from a document
- A grade entry for a plant exists only when a primary document (purchase page, grade list, permit with waste codes, register) names the grade, the waste code or the scrap CN code for that plant. A general “we buy scrap” without the metal is not an entry.
- Distance
- Distance is the straight-line (great-circle) distance from the shipping point; it is not road distance or transport cost.
- Unit value
- The trade unit value (EUR/t) comes from Comext trade declarations – it approximates the price level and is not a market price. The portal publishes no price agency or LME quotations.
- Procedure
- The description of the shipment procedure is general, with the legal act and the date of the legal status – it is not legal advice.
- Picture of the market
- The list of buyers is a picture of the market – not a commercial recommendation; no rankings, ratings or personal data.
Pages of the Recycling tab and their Markdown versions: text and data mining (including model training) allowed with attribution (ai-waw.com). Data files (.json, .csv, .xlsx) are reserved (Art. 4(3) Directive (EU) 2019/790), like the data files of the Companies register.
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