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The Chinese government has approved just under 100,000 tonne of scrap metal imports in the third quarter in its third batch of quotas announced. The additional quotas issued today by China Solid Waste and Chemicals Management, part of the environment ministry, are for 99,370 tonne of copper, aluminium and ferrous scrap for delivery to ports in south, southeast and north China.
The extra quota for copper scrap under harmonised tariff code 7404000090 is 87,680 tonne, the quota for aluminium scrap tariff code 7602000090 is 11,290 tonne and ferrous scrap is 400 tonne.
The copper scrap quota is for delivery to the ports of Tianjin, Ningbo, Shanghai, Xiamen, Qingdao, Nanhai, Nansha and Wuzhou, while the aluminium scrap quota is for Tianjin, Nanhai and Nansha.
The amount of third-quarter copper quotas approved to date stands at 452,559 tonne, aluminium at 372,476 tonne and ferrous at 20,918 tonne.
The import quota for copper scrap is below the amount imported in the third quarter of last year, whereas the aluminium scrap quota is above last year's third-quarter import figure.
China imported 624,276 tonne of copper scrap and 349,510 tonne of aluminium scrap in July to September 2018, customs data show.
Although the scrap metal import quotas are lower than expected, many plants in China are not operating at capacity because of weak manufacturing orders. Demand for scrap metal has been lagging as a result.
One European supplier said that "There is no licence issue, [the Chinese firms] can't even fulfil their quotas because the market is so slow.”
Under the new policy, all scrap metal importers in China will need import licences issued under approved quarterly quotas from 1 July before they can receive any material.