China leads the world in growth in scrap steel consumption

Higher emission standards for China's steel industry continued to drive the use of scrap steel in the country for steel production in the first six months of 2019.

According to statistics from the World Scrap Recycling Association, the consumption of ferrous scrap in China increased significantly - by 20.7% year-on-year to 103.28 million tons in January-June - from 85.57 million tons in the same period in 2018. ...

China remained the largest consumer of steel scrap in the world, using more than double the EU's consumption and nearly five times the US over the same period.

Stricter emission standards have prompted Chinese Oxygen Furnace (BOF) plants to increase the average scrap rate to 20.2%.

Further increases in steel production and Beijing's encouragement to increase its electric arc furnace (EAF) steel production capacity have also helped China to increase its use of scrap metal. Steel production in China in January-June amounted to 492.169 million tons, an increase of 9.9 percent over the same period last year.

But the ratio of scrap metal to crude steel production in China is still significantly lower than in other major steel producing regions. The ratio of scrap metal to steel use in China in January-June was 20.98%, while in other key regions of the world this figure exceeded 30%.

“The consumption of scrap metal in China is high, but it is probably still 10-20 years from reaching a scrap-to-steel ratio of at least 50%, as in the US and Europe,” said one of the European suppliers of scrap metal Argus at the BIR World Recycling conference. Convention in Budapest on October 14-15.