<img src="https://absafricatv.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/image-23.jpg" alt="Part 1: Does every stakeholder in Europe’s aluminium scrap debate fully understand the recycling business model?”>
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InterviewDate
17 Jul 2026
In Part 1 of this exclusive interview with AL Circle, Stefanie Dixon, an international non-ferrous metals trading specialist with nearly two decades of experience in secondary raw materials, explains why aluminium scrap cannot be treated as a single commodity, why market dynamics matter as much as policy ambitions, and how a deeper understanding of alloy chemistry, quality and commercial realities could reshape the debate around Europe’s recycling future.
Her work focuses on international aluminium scrap markets, recycling economics, commodity trading and the interaction between policy and market dynamics. She is a strong advocate for evidence-based policymaking and believes that effective regulation must be built on a clear understanding of how the recycling industry actually works.
AL Circle:Europe exports close to 1.3 million tonnes of aluminium scrap annually, prompting calls for greater retention of secondary raw materials within the region. From your perspective as an international metal trading professional, what is missing from the argument that Europe should simply retain this material for domestic recycling?
Stefanie Dixon: Let’s be honest, we are not discussing simply retaining material in Europe. The primary reason export restrictions are being discussed is because they are expected to reduce the price of scrap within Europe by decreasing competition.
If European consumers genuinely wanted to retain more material today, they already have the ability to do so by offering prices that compete with international markets.
If a foundry believes it needs, for example, scrap prices to come down by €200 per tonne to remain competitive securing feedstock against their orders, that value has to come from somewhere. Export restrictions effectively transfer that value away from recyclers by reducing the price they receive for their material. The question is whether that creates new value for Europe or simply redistributes it within the supply chain from one party to another? Recyclers are facing exactly the same inflationary pressures as foundries. Their overheads won’t fall simply because scrap prices would.
While 1.3 million tonnes sounds like a significant volume, context is important. Recycling Europe estimates that more than 6.2 million tonnes of aluminium are already recycled and processed within Europe each year, meaning over 80 per cent already remains within the European market.
In my view, Europe doesn’t need more aluminium scrap in general. It needs the right aluminium scrap, in the right quality, for the right end use. The fact that Europe is simultaneously importing 650,000t and exporting 1.3 million tonnes demonstrates that the market already understands this. Why does policy continue to treat aluminium scrap as though it were a single interchangeable commodity when the market clearly does not.
From my own 18 years of experience within the non-ferrous recycling space, many of which I have spent trading these materials internationally, the vast majority of clean, single-alloy grades already find a home within Europe for most of the year.
The material I most commonly see entering export markets tends to be the more complex, mixed or contaminated grades that require further processing.
That is, of course, a commercial observation rather than a statistical one and it reinforces why I believe we need better data.
Until we start recording the actual grades and specifications leaving Europe, rather than relying on a handful of broad HS commodity codes that assume most aluminium is equal, which it certainly is not, we cannot say with certainty which scrap grades account for the majority of exports.
From where I sit, I don’t see ship after ship of clean 6063 leaving Europe. In fact, there is already strong competition between European foundries for many of the cleaner, single-alloy grades, and that competition is reflected in the prices they are prepared to pay. What I predominantly see entering export markets are painted and contaminated mixed grades because of the additional processing they require.
What’s missing from the debate is an appreciation of how aluminium scrap markets actually work. If Europe wants more material to remain within the region, it has to create the commercial conditions for that to happen. Restricting exports alone does not create demand, processing capacity or investment certainty.
Surely, we cannot focus on restricting exports as a means of improving the competitiveness of European foundries by reducing scrap prices putting at risk the very recycling businesses that do the heavy lifting to make scrap presentable for them to use in the first place. Energy costs, labour costs, environmental compliance, investment requirements and global competition all have a significant impact on competitiveness. Simply lowering the cost of scrap does not address those structural issues.
There is also a practical consideration. Does today’s European remelting industry have the capacity, technology and commercial demand to absorb those 1.3 million tons? If not, then restricting exports could result in substantial stockpiling pressures. Are recyclers expected to become long-term free storage facilities for the rest of the value chain? It would likely drive a huge consolidation across the market while pushing many SME’s out of business.
For scale, 1.3 million tonnes is equivalent to the annual output of approximately eleven large 120,000 tonne per year remelting facilities. That’s before we even consider the alloy mix. Those 1.3 million tonnes are not a homogeneous stream of aluminium scrap. They comprise a wide range of alloys and grades with very different chemistries, contamination levels and end markets.
Simply retaining the material within Europe does not mean there are domestic consumers capable of using every grade economically or that the necessary sorting and upgrading infrastructure already exists.
The real question should be “How do we make Europe the most competitive place in the world to recycle and consume aluminium, while ensuring every part of the value chain remains commercially sustainable?”
AL Circle:You have mentioned in a previous statement that ‘aluminium scrap doesn’t equal aluminium scrap’. Could you explain how the markets and end use differ for materials such as clean 6063 extrusion scrap, mixed cast scrap, twitch or TT, clean wheels, and mixed 2xxx/7xxx alloy scrap?
Stefanie Dixon: Every grade has its own market, its own technical requirements and its own economic drivers. Any policy designed around tonnage alone risks overlooking those important differences.
The 1.3 million tonnes often quoted represent dozens of very different products with different values, alloy chemistries, processing requirements and end markets. The same is true of the approximately 650,000 tonnes Europe imports each year. Those imports are not interchangeable either; they are specific grades for specific applications.
Aluminium alloys have a specific chemical composition for a reason. Whether it’s strength, corrosion resistance, machinability, weldability or fatigue performance, the chemistry determines where that alloy can be used and equally the scrap it becomes at its end of life. Simply talking about ‘aluminium scrap’ overlooks one of the most important factors, which is the alloys.
Take clean 6063 extrusion as an example. It is one of the most widely used alloys across the construction, transport and general engineering sectors. It has a relatively balanced chemistry, making it suitable for remelting back into similar 6XXX products or compatible alloys. It is also easily visually identifiable to recyclers, meaning it can be separated with a high degree of confidence and provides smelters with a consistent, low-risk feedstock. Unsurprisingly, Europe already has very strong demand for this material and fierce domestic competition.
From my experience clean 6063 is not leaving Europe in large quantities. I appreciate that people will immediately point to periods when US premiums are exceptionally strong but headline price comparisons rarely tell the whole story. You also have to consider significantly higher freight costs, lower payloads due to container weight restrictions, longer transit times, additional working capital tied up while the cargo is at sea, currency exposure, financing costs, payment terms and the fact that there are relatively few established long-term trading relationships for large volumes of clean 6063 into that market.
A trader doesn’t compare premiums in isolation. They compare the entire commercial proposition. When all those factors are taken into account, Europe often remains the most competitive outlet for clean 6063, which is exactly why the majority of that material already stays within the European market.
Back to the material itself, once you introduce paint, even across part of your load of scrap, your realised value falls significantly as the discount to LME widens. Despite the price drop it is still an attractive grade for European foundries. However, if we take it further, and add iron contamination such as steel rivets, or materials like rubber and foam from window insulation on top of paint, the number of European consumers willing and/or able to purchase that alloy reduces significantly.
Read all the latest developments in Europe’s aluminium recycling industry
It may still be a valuable scrap grade, but it requires significant additional processing. When contamination becomes excessive these pieces of 6063 extrusion change grade completely and may end up in a mixed grade such as Taint Tabor.
Then there are the 2xxx and 7xxx alloys. Individually, and when kept clean and segregated, these are high-value aerospace and defence manufacturing alloys containing high levels of copper or zinc. Grades such as 2014, 2024, 7050 and 7075 can all command significant premiums when sold separately.
They are specialist alloys that cannot generally be blended into conventional aluminium remelting streams without adversely affecting alloy chemistry. They require dedicated outlets capable of managing those compositions, where both quality and chemistry specifications are exceptionally stringent.
Once 2xxx and 7xxx alloys are mixed together, they become far less attractive to many European foundries because the chemistry no longer suits their melting programmes unless the individual alloys can first be separated. Add paint, iron attachments and other contaminants into that mixed stream, and the number of potential consumers reduces even further.
Unfortunately, once products reach the end of their life, those alloys rarely return in neatly separated grades. They frequently arrive mixed together in the recycling stream.
Any aluminium trader will probably wince when offered aircraft or tank scrap. It may sound valuable, but in reality it is one of the most complex aluminium scrap streams to market, with numerous alloy families and contaminants mixed together.
Personally, I can’t think of a European consumer actively looking for mixed, painted and potentially iron-contaminated 2xxx/7xxx scrap as a feedstock. In my own trading experience, export has been the only commercially
This is exactly why simply referring to ‘aluminium scrap’ is so misleading. Clean segregated aluminium and mixed, painted, with iron attachments contaminated aluminium may both technically be aluminium scrap, yet their commercial value, potential customer base and recycling route are completely different.
The same principle applies to mixed cast scrap, clean wheels and mixed shredder fractions such as Zorba or TT.
Clean wheels already have strong demand because they provide a consistent alloy.
Mixed cast can be an excellent secondary foundry feedstock but its value depends heavily on chemistry and contamination.
More mixed fractions like TT however, are where the greatest challenge lies. These fractions often contain a valuable mix of alloys, but recovering that value requires significant investment in sorting and alloy separation, which is exactly why they should feature prominently in the current export debate.
AL Circle:European foundries generally have stronger demand for particular scrap grades, including clean 6xxx material, certain 5xxx alloys and clean wheels. Are these higher-demand grades already largely being consumed within Europe? If so, which scrap categories account for the more significant export flows, and where is the demand for them coming from?
Stefanie Dixon: From what I see in the international trading market, yes.
Clean, single-alloy scrap that is easy to identify and recycle generally finds a home within Europe for most of the year.
There are always exceptions, particularly during seasonal shutdowns such as Easter, the summer holiday period and Christmas, or when domestic demand temporarily softens, but these grades are already highly valued by European consumers and make up a large part of the 80+ per cent already staying.
The larger export flows tend to be the more challenging grades, material that is mixed, contaminated or requires further processing. That contamination may be paint, steel attachments, rubber, foam or other non-metallic materials.
In other cases, it is a metallurgical issue, where different alloy families are mixed together, making them unsuitable for many European melting programmes without further separation.
International markets often have different processing capabilities, lower labour and energy costs, different end-use requirements and, in many cases, downstream industries specifically geared towards upgrading these more complex scrap streams.
Current automated sorting systems can be conservative. A piece of otherwise valuable aluminium with a steel screw or attachment may be rejected into a lower-value stream unless that contaminant is removed beforehand.
Some overseas processors can achieve higher aluminium recovery from mixed grades because lower labour costs make manual upgrading commercially
Export markets often specialise in recovering value from intermediate products rather than competing for premium furnace-ready feedstock.
That difference is often lost in the wider debate.
Commercial terms also play a significant role in directing the flow of material. A trade should always be viewed as a whole, not simply by comparing the headline price per tonne. When competing outlets are in the same commercial ballpark on price, comparing factors such as fixation options, claims philosophy, payment terms, contractual flexibility and delivery capability can be just as important. Selling directly into many European foundries can involve extended 30, 60 and even 90-day payment terms, restricted delivery windows, more challenging logistical planning and extremely tight quality specifications.
I’ve personally sold material to a lower-priced outlet simply because they could take immediate delivery. Creating physical space in a recycling yard can sometimes be worth more than securing the last few euros per tonne.
It’s important to emphasise, this tends to apply to lower value mixed grades rather than premium alloys.
For clean, high-value grades such as 1050 or 6063, the price premium available within Europe is often so significant that recyclers are prepared to accept longer payment terms, more restrictive delivery windows and the additional commercial demands of supplying domestic foundries because the overall return still justifies it.
For lower-value mixed streams such as TT however, the price differential between competing outlets is often much narrower. In those situations, operational considerations such as immediate collection, available storage space, cash flow and logistical flexibility can become the deciding factors.
AL Circle:What determines whether a European scrap parcel is consumed domestically or exported — price, alloy chemistry, contamination levels, sorting capability, furnace technology, scale, or a combination of these factors?
Stefanie Dixon: It’s a combination of all those factors, but if I had to rank them, I’d probably put alloy chemistry and quality first, followed by processing capability and economics. Price is obviously important, but it’s often the final piece of the puzzle rather than the starting point.
A scrap parcel first has to be technically suitable for the consumer.
Does the alloy chemistry match the foundry demand for their current production? Is the contamination level acceptable? Can it be used safely without compromising the finished alloy?
If the answer is no, the discussion about price is irrelevant.
Presentation matters too. Some foundries have strict size specifications and will not accept material that is too small, too thin or too large.
Some require loose scrap, while others require baled material. The recycler must be able to meet not only the chemical specification but also the physical specification required by the consumer.
Even two parcels with identical chemistry may have completely different commercial value if one meets a consumer’s physical specification and the other does not.
If several consumers are technically capable of using the same material, it will generally flow to the market offering the best overall commercial proposition once logistics, payment terms, fixation options, delivery slot availability, contractual risk and long-term relationships are taken into account.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that exports are purely price-driven.
In reality, scrap doesn’t simply move to the highest bidder; it moves to the consumer who can create the greatest value from that particular grade. Sometimes that’s in Europe, and sometimes it’s overseas.
As I see it, the destination of a scrap parcel is determined by its alloy chemistry, quality, processing capability, commercial value, the ability of the end user to recover its maximum value and whether the overall commercial terms meet the buyer’s and the seller’s requirements.
Note: Stay tuned for Part 2 to discover her perspective on how Europe can strengthen its recycling ecosystem while remaining globally competitive.
Europe aluminium recycling challengesEurope aluminium recycling marketAluminium scrapRecycled AluminiumEurope
