16 September 2025 – In the EU, calls are being made for a 30% export tax on aluminium scrap – whilst domestic producers at the same time are exporting significant volumes of unprocessed aluminium. EUROFER Report Economic and Steel Market Outlook 2025/2026 full of faulty charts. Aluminium and nickel prices continue to move sideways.
Aluminium and nickel prices continue to move sideways
Following yesterday’s rollover of SHFE contracts in base metals, aluminium and nickel moved steadily sideways. Indonesian benchmark prices for nickel, published yesterday, also recorded a slight increase of 0.7%.
Iron ore prices on the Singapore Exchange improved today by about 0.8% to USD 106.4 per tonne after a stable start to the week.
Aluminium scrap: calls for 30% export tax
It is not only European steel producers who want to restrict scrap exports from the EU with half-baked arguments – domestic aluminium producers are blowing the same propaganda horn.
The European aluminium lobby has now called for a 30% export tax on aluminium scrap to keep the recycling raw material within the Union.
Arguments are based on weak figures
To make their case, EU aluminium producers are pointing to the higher US Section 232 tariffs and argue that significantly more aluminium scrap would now flow to the United States. However, this argument is based on very weak figures, which they attempt to compensate for with much polemic. In 2024, only 9,400 tonnes of aluminium scrap were exported to the United States. The total export share of aluminium scrap to the United States in 2024 was therefore just 0.7%.
It is therefore hardly surprising that European Aluminium only publishes percentages about a supposedly massive scrap outflow to the United States. Yet the United States, with a forecast share of 1.7% or around 22,300 tonnes for 2025, is by no means the largest buyer of European aluminium scrap.
India biggest European aluminium scrap buyer
India, with a market share of almost 30% or around 376,000 tonnes, is likely to remain the largest buyer of aluminium scrap from Europe, as in previous years. India could even increase its market share compared to 2024 by another 2% or 31,000 tonnes. Strangely enough, one reads nothing about this much higher share.
EU aluminium producers should look at their own exports
To prevent the alleged outflow of such urgently needed raw materials from Europe, producers could instead take a look at their own exports. These (excluding scrap) have averaged more than 2.1 million tonnes in recent years – including almost 460,000 tonnes of unwrought aluminium, making it the second most important export product of domestic producers in terms of volume (around 22%).
It would be better if EU aluminium producers started here and swept in front of their own doors, instead of trying to restrict the entrepreneurial freedom of small and medium-sized enterprises in the recycling sector.
EUROFER Economic and Steel Market Outlook 2025/2026
And whilst we are on the subject of European industry associations: the recently published EUROFER Economic and Steel Market Outlook 2025/2026 was released with statistics and charts which, on initial review, can largely be described as faulty. Whether this is intentional or simply due to shortcomings on the part of the association is something we will need to take a closer look at. We shall report on this in due course.
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