The Ministry of Trade and Industry of South Africa has proposed a six-month ban on the export of ferrous and non-ferrous scrap, as well as establishing a permitting system for external sales of certain types of semi-finished products.
Steel producers in South Africa supported this proposal. According to the South African Iron & Steel Institute (SAISI), this measure will help to cope with a wave of metal thefts, which have become a real disaster for the country’s economy in recent years.
South Africa has been hit by a wave of vandalism. Copper cables, steel structures and other metal products are dismantled en masse, and scrap or products of its primary remelting are sent, for the most part, abroad.
True, the proposed measure will hit the legal exporters of black and non-ferrous scrap metal. The volume of its external sales is, on average, about 400 thousand tons per year. The main buyers are China, India and Pakistan. However, South African metallurgists say that a temporary ban on the export of scrap will improve the supply of this raw material to local companies and lower prices for it.
