Scrap Metal Trading

Our trading desk turns the scrap our yards collect into money in a foreign currency. Ferrous and non-ferrous material is graded, weighed and photographed at the yard, loaded at Mombasa, and sold to mills and smelters that need it. It is the largest line in the business by volume, and it is the reason the collection network exists.

Ferrous scrap

Heavy melting steel, structural sections, plate and cast go out in bulk. Light gauge, shredded and turnings go out containerised or bulk depending on the buyer. Ferrous is a tonnage business: the margin per tonne is thin and the money is made by moving a great deal of it reliably, which means a steady flow from the yards, a vessel that sails on time and a buyer who pays on documents. We have all three.

Non-ferrous scrap

Copper, aluminium, brass, lead, zinc and stainless carry far more value per tonne and demand far more care in grading. Alloy composition drives the price, and visual inspection alone will not settle it. We sort by hand, spark test and, where the value justifies it, analyse with handheld instruments, so the grade on the ticket is the grade in the container. Non-ferrous moves containerised, sealed at the yard, with the seal number on the documents.

Grading is where disputes start

Almost every scrap dispute traces back to grade rather than price. Two parties agree a price per tonne for a stated grade, the material arrives, and the buyer says it is not that grade. By then the vessel has sailed, payment terms have started running and the disagreement is expensive for everyone.

We grade at the yard against a stated standard, record it, and photograph the material as graded before it loads. The buyer sees that classification before the vessel sails. It is the only point at which a disagreement about grade is cheap to resolve, and making it visible early costs us far less than arguing about it later.

From yard to vessel

Material is consolidated at the yard nearest the port, cut to the length the buyer's furnace accepts, and loaded under our own supervision. Bulk ferrous goes into the hold by grab; non-ferrous is stuffed into sealed containers at the yard with the seal number recorded on the packing list. A surveyor attends loading where the contract calls for one, and the draft survey or container weights go onto the documents the buyer pays against. Nothing leaves without a photograph, a weight and a seal.

Licensed and traceable

Scrap export from Kenya is regulated because unregulated scrap creates a market for stolen infrastructure. The licensing regime exists to make the chain of custody traceable, and a compliant exporter can show where every load came from. We hold the Ministry of Trade licensing the activity requires, and we produce it during counterparty due diligence rather than after a contract is signed. Buyers who ask for it are the buyers we want.

The return leg

A container that leaves Mombasa full of scrap comes back, and it need not come back empty. On the return leg we import recyclables for processing, and the consumables and equipment the yards run on. Our own Kenya customs record is published on this site, so you can see exactly what we bring in, in which tariff chapters and from which origins, rather than take a description of our trade on trust.

How a contract is written

We contract against Incoterms 2020 and we name the term. FOB Mombasa is the standard basis for export; CIF for what we import. Ambiguity about who carries the risk at which point is the single most common source of loss in a first-time scrap trade, and it surfaces after something has already gone wrong. The contract also names the grading standard, the inspection point, the documents required for payment and what happens if the material does not match. None of that is unusual. Settling it before the first shipment rather than after the first disagreement is.

Trading and the rest of the group

The material we trade comes from the sourcing desk and from the decommissioning jobs the monetization desk runs. The gap between paying a seller at the yard and being paid by a buyer on documents is what the financing desk covers. Mother Earth needs to rest, and every tonne we ship to a mill is a tonne that never has to be mined, smelted and shipped from ore. That is the business, and the trading desk is where it turns into revenue.