Issue 41, 2023 - This week's editorial: H1 2023 scrap consumption falls, long term trend remains strong

China’s ferrous scrap consumption fell 2.9% on-year in the first half of 2023 to 116.23 million tonnes despite its 1.3% rise in crude steel output. The country nevertheless remained the world’s largest scrap user, Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) statistics advisor Rolf Willeke said at the association’s conference in Abu Dhabi this week.

The EU27, US, Japan, Turkey and South Korea registered declines in scrap usage respectively by 9.6% to 40.02mt, 3.1% to 21.8mt, 4.3% to 16.2mt, 16.4% to 13.68mt and 1.5% to 13.9mt. This was amid declines in crude steel output.

Consequently, the proportion of recycled steel used in crude steel production in H1 was 21.7% in China, 60.3% in the EU, 54.7% in the USA, 38.1% in Japan and 41.3% in Korea. Particularly noteworthy was the high figure of 87.2% for Turkey.

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