Who Buys Aluminum Ingots
More manufacturers are choosing aluminum over other metals. Some industries, such as construction, rely on aluminum for its durability, while others depend on its flexibility and conduciveness. Aluminum produces natural oxides, creating a thin layer of corrosion resistance. What's more, aluminum's unique characteristics make it suitable for recycling repeatedly. It maintains its physical and chemical properties even after multiple rounds of recycling and years of reuse. That means recycled aluminum used in production processes today is just as sturdy, flexible and stable as it was decades ago when it first went into a consumer product. It is also 100% recyclable, so there's no waste involved and no material lost over time.
who buys aluminum ingots
In developed countries, supplies of secondary and scrap aluminum are high, contributing to a large recycling market. The energy cost to recycle aluminum is typically over 90% more affordable than producing aluminum from raw materials. Additionally, nearly three-quarters of all the aluminum the world has ever produced is still in use today. It has cycled through thousands of aluminum products, reducing waste and helping to lower pollution levels.
If your industrial business requires aluminum for its products or produces aluminum as scrap and needs to dispose of it responsibly, recycled aluminum is an appealing solution. At HARBOR, we help navigating price fluctuations and changes in the aluminum scrap and secondary market. We have years of experience consulting companies on how to effectively source scrap aluminum for their industry needs.
Producers across the aluminum industry pay over $800 million per year for recycled and scrap material. Due to its value, almost three-quarters of all the aluminum ever produced remains in circulation today.
Aluminum is the popular packaging choice for beverage makers and food packaging companies for many reasons, especially printability. Additionally, more than 90% of aluminum from building components and automotive parts undergoes recycling at the end of its life span, though rates for the aluminum used in consumer packaging are lower.
So how does the aluminum recycling process work? Scrap and secondary aluminum are shredded and sorted to remove glass, metal and other debris. Recycled scrap aluminum is liquified at temperatures over 1200F, poured into molds and formed into aluminum ingots. The same oxides that produce resistance to corrosion appear after contact with the environment. These oxides, known as dross, are removed with a skimming tool. Dross is refined to extract any valuable materials.
Old scrap is aluminum that has been used by consumers and discarded. Examples of old aluminum scrap include car cylinder heads, electrical cabling, window frames and used beverage cans. The composition of old scrap may be contaminated and is typically unknown, meaning smelters cannot safely accept the material.
In addition to these two types of aluminum scrap collected during the first stages of the aluminum recycling process, smelters can collect aluminum from other community areas. These include local and regional authorities, scrap merchants, households and other sources.
Melting aluminum typically generates a byproduct known as white dross, which contains about 15% to 80% aluminum mixed with impurities. Recyclers generally skim off the white dross to recover its aluminum content.
These days, government entities make it easy to recycle aluminum cans. Programs offering curbside or municipal pickup are widespread, as are recycling bins. Residents can throw in items like soda cans, aluminum foil and aluminum baking trays and know these things will go on to aluminum recycling centers and provide life to new products.
Ten states in the United States also allow consumers to turn in their used aluminum cans for cash, providing a greater incentive for recycling. More than a third of all recycled aluminum cans come from the deposit programs in this handful of states.
The lighter weight also improves the energy efficiency and fuel economy of automobiles containing aluminum parts and components. Businesses that purchase aluminum for their manufacturing processes add value to their products and become better stewards of the environment.
The market outlook for the aluminum scrap metal market is positive, as more companies move toward manufacturing with aluminum. The tech, construction and consumer goods markets consistently find new applications for aluminum.
Recycling aluminum saves money and energy compared to producing aluminum from raw materials. Beyond the savings in production costs, recycling is much more energy-efficient than mining operations. As more companies and consumers focus on increasing sustainability, recycled aluminum will emerge even further as the leading metal for manufacturing. Below are some of the environmental benefits recycled aluminum offers:
Recycling aluminum saves 90% of the energy required to mine and process primary aluminum. This number is so large partly because extracting bauxite and using it to produce new aluminum is incredibly energy intensive, using approximately twice the amount of energy required to create new plastic. Using recycled aluminum reduces energy consumption and all the environmental harms that go along with it.
Reducing energy consumption also means decreasing fossil fuel use. Recycling aluminum instead of creating more primary aluminum reduces the harms associated with fossil fuel burning and leaves more of this finite resource available for future use.
Minimizing fossil fuel consumption contributes fewer pollutants to the atmosphere and lowers levels of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. One wrinkle here is that recycling itself requires fossil fuel consumption and produces carbon emissions, so recycled aluminum water cans, for instance, are not entirely environmentally blameless. However, compared with new plastic water bottles and the carbon costs for producing them, aluminum cans still reduce emissions substantially.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reported a substantial body of data about aluminum recycling. According to the EPA, the United States generates 3.9 million U.S. tons of aluminum waste which accounts for approximately 1.3% of all municipal solid waste generation.
Of the 3.9 million tons of aluminum waste produced in the United States, 2.66 million tons of it went to landfills, while only 670,000 tons went for recycling. An additional 560,000 tons underwent combustion with energy recovery.
Recycled aluminum tends to bring in excellent prices. However, aluminum recycling rates around the world tend to fluctuate with supply and demand. For the most reliable and up-to-date information, you'll want to work with premier aluminum specialists with access to the latest global market intelligence and price outlooks.
To buy or sell environmentally friendly scrap and secondary aluminum for industrial processes, work with HARBOR Aluminum. We are the only market intelligence firm that specializes in aluminum pricing and forecasting. We don't work with other metals, meaning we can focus all our energy and resources on providing the best aluminum data possible.
We offer value for businesses by educating our clients about true market aluminum values. We provide detailed, accurate aluminum industry data to help clients navigate the field and its submarkets worldwide. We also help clients understand the aluminum industry price outlook and devise sound investment, purchasing and marketing strategies. Once we've accomplished all that, we connect our clients with the right industry supplier or customer for their products and services, securing economically beneficial partnerships for both buyer and seller.
Start your own smelting business to make money from scrap metal. Since smelting involves heating metals to the point of liquidation, special permits and safety precautions are required. With the right equipment and planning, it's possible to process copper, brass and steel among other metals into ingots for sale to retail and industrial customers.
What are the best things to scrap for money? Copper, one of the most commonly recycled metals in North America, is a good place to start. This metal is found in everything from DVD players to home plumbing systems. Amassing copper and other metal, such as brass and aluminum, can be relatively easy because of its use in households and businesses. However, it's important to collect scraps in an ethical manner to avoid complications when selling ingots to third-parties. At some recycling centers, photo IDs and fingerprints are required to make sales due to illegal activity associated with collecting scrap metal.
In addition to making ingots for sale to recycling centers and industrial manufacturers, it's possible to smelt metal into products. Gates, hood ornaments and door knockers are among the retail items that can be molded from smelted metal and sold in retail outlets. Machine shops also need quality base metals for their operations. However, machinists may have specific requirements for the quality and composition of the smelted metal they purchase. A smelting business also can service machine shops by taking their scraps and recycling them.
Alongside glass and steel, aluminum is one of the easiest to recycle materials on the planet. According to the Aluminum Association, nearly 75 percent of all aluminum that has ever been produced is still in use to this day; with the majority of aluminum cans that you purchase in a store having already been recycled many times over.
While the environmental impact of producing aluminum may be significant, the benefits of recycling aluminum are clear. The reason why three-quarters of all aluminum that has ever been produced is still in use to this day is simple; aluminum recycling represents the circular economy at its finest. One of the most widely recycled materials in the world (and among the easiest to recycle), aluminum it is an almost perfect example of a true closed-loop circular solution. 041b061a72