During his presentation at the SteelOrbis 2022 Spring Conference & 86th IREPAS Meeting held in Istanbul on May 29-31, sharing the trade statistics for raw materials from recycling for 2021, Olivier Francois, president of the European Recycling Industries’ Confederation (EuRIC), discussed the revision of waste shipment regulations in the EU and its impacts on the trade of steel scrap from a recycler’s perspective.
As for the situation in the EU, Mr. Francois stated that the total output of raw material from recycling was 102 million mt in 2021. The EuRIC president said that the local use of the recycled raw material in the EU in the given year totaled 82.5 million mt, while exports amounted to 19.5 million mt.
Stating that the EU-27 countries are the main scrap exporters in the world, Mr. Francois said that the EU-27 countries exported 19.5 million mt of scrap in 2021, up by 11.5 percent year on year. The EU-27 countries were followed by the US and the UK, which exported 17.9 million mt and 8.3 million mt of scrap last year, respectively.
Noting that Turkey is the world’s No.4 in steel scrap use in steelmaking and the No. 1 importer of steel scrap, he stated that Turkey imported 24.9 million mt of scrap in 2021, of which 13.1 million mt of scrap was from EU-27 countries, meaning more than 50 percent of Turkish steel production depends on EU-27 steel scrap.
In November last year, the European Commission (EC) tabled a proposal to revise EU rules governing shipment of waste, with the aim of easing shipments of waste for reuse and recycling in the EU to support the transition to a circular economy, and to step up enforcement to counteract illegal shipments of waste. Noting that waste exports will not be totally banned, but will be subject to stricter rules, except where processing conditions applied in the receiving country are “broadly equivalent” to those in the EU, the EuRIC official stated that these conditions will be audited by the EC and the main problem here is that the EC can overrule the audit if they feel like doing so.
Francois noted that the EU waste export restrictions will likely result in supply disruptions and a major imbalance in the steel market such as excess supply of steel scrap and a price drop in the EU - to EU steel mills’ advantage, a lack of steel scrap in the global market, distorting the competition, causing a disadvantage to Turkey.
Stating that the EC should do an impact assessment again reconsidering the above possible results, Francois stated that an appeal to the World Trade Organization on this subject is certainly needed.