Aluminium Scrap Import Data 2026: Who Is Actually Buying

Aluminium scrap is one of the few commodities where the buyer list changes faster than the price. A smelter that bought 400 tonnes a month from Rotterdam last year is buying from Bangkok this year, because a policy changed, or a quality spec moved, or somebody landed a better freight rate. If you sell aluminium scrap and you are still working from a contact list you built in 2023, you are selling to last year's market.

Where the tonnage actually goes

Four destinations absorb most of the internationally traded volume, and they buy for different reasons. India buys because its secondary smelting capacity outruns its domestic collection rate by a wide margin. South Korea and Germany buy to feed established rolling and casting operations that need consistent, spec-graded feedstock. China buys selectively, because its import rules screen on quality rather than on volume, which is why its intake grows in single digits while Indian demand grows faster.

That difference matters when you are pricing an offer. An Indian buyer will often take mixed grades and handle the sorting locally. A German or Korean buyer typically will not, and will pay a premium for material that arrives already meeting a named specification. Sending the same offer sheet to both is how exporters end up with a high enquiry count and a low conversion rate.

The China question, answered with numbers

Everyone in this trade has an opinion about Chinese demand. The measured picture in early 2026 is modest growth on a controlled base: 526,380 tonnes in the first quarter, against 506,546 tonnes a year earlier, per AL Circle's quarterly tracking. That is growth, but it is not the surge the market talks itself into every few months.

The supplier concentration is the more useful number. Thailand at 21%, the European Union at 19% and the United Kingdom at 13% means more than half of China's imported scrap comes from three origins. If you are shipping from anywhere else, you are competing against incumbents who already clear the quality screen, and your pitch has to be about spec reliability rather than price.

Scrap is not a commodity sale, it is a specification sale. The buyer is not buying aluminium, they are buying the absence of contamination.

What HS 7602 does and does not tell you

HS 7602 covers aluminium waste and scrap as a single heading, which is both its strength and its limit. It captures the whole trade in one code, so volume comparisons across countries are clean. It does not distinguish Taint/Tabor from Tense from turnings, so two shipments with identical customs treatment can be commercially unrelated.

In practice that means you use the code to find who is buying, then use shipment-level detail, the description field, the origin, the frequency and the counterparty, to work out what they are actually buying. A buyer importing 40-foot containers monthly from three different origins is running a blending operation. A buyer importing one origin at a fixed monthly cadence has a supply contract, and you are pitching to replace somebody. If HS headings are new to you, the HS code guide covers how the structure works.

Reading an importer's behaviour before you contact them

Three signals separate a serious prospect from a name on a list:

• Cadence. Monthly or fortnightly arrivals mean production demand. Sporadic large lots usually mean a trader, who will negotiate on price alone.
• Origin spread. Buying from five countries means the buyer is not locked in and is open to a sixth. Buying from one means an incumbent relationship you have to displace.
• Volume trend. An importer whose quarterly tonnage is climbing is adding capacity. That is the moment to be in front of them, not eighteen months later.

None of this requires a phone call. It is all visible in shipment records before you spend a minute on outreach.

Where the 2026 opportunity sits

Two shifts are worth trading against. The first is the steady pull from India, where the gap between secondary smelting capacity and domestic scrap collection is structural rather than cyclical, which makes it a durable import market rather than a spot one. The second is the tightening quality expectation everywhere else. Buyers in Korea, Germany and China are converging on cleaner, better-documented material, and exporters who can evidence grade consistently are winning business from those who compete on headline price.

There is also a quieter one: Gulf and Turkish re-processors have been building capacity, and Türkiye's importers are increasingly visible in metals lanes generally. Turkish import data is worth a look alongside the four majors, as is steel and iron if you handle mixed metals.

How ShipScout helps

Trade statistics tell you a country imported 1.29 million tonnes. They do not tell you which company, at which port, from whom, or how often. ShipScout closes that gap with 11B+ shipment records across 240+ countries:

1. Search HS 7602 by destination and get the actual importing companies, ranked by volume rather than by who paid for a directory listing.
2. See each buyer's shipment history, frequency, origins and ports, so you know whether you are pitching a smelter, a trader or a blender before you write the email.
3. Track your competitors' lanes and spot the customers they have started losing.
4. Pull decision-maker contacts where available and open with the buyer's own trade record rather than a generic introduction.

The tonnage figures in this article are public. The buyer names behind them are not. Start a free trial and pull the list for your grade and your target market.