Big Demand for American Scrap Overseas

Trucks shove piles of metal around the ASM Recycling yard. Five years ago most of this stuff stayed in the states.

“Now you have the Chinese and India that have increased their demand for scrap,” says Owner Lee Leavitt.

He says 90-percent of their copper goes to China. Before the global boom, Chinese importers only knew they were buying generic American scrap metal.

“They now know us by name and we have to insure our quality when it goes over there so if there's an issue or a problem,” says Leavitt. “We don't want to get a black mark by our name by providing them by poor quality.”

Look at grade 2 copper looks like a few years ago it was probably only worth about 75¢ a pound. Today it’s worth about $3 pound. That means one cube costs about $10,000 to $12,000. Copper's become a hot commodity on the black market. With thieves stripping the metal from air conditioners and construction sites, ASM now only accepts metal from industrial clients.

“Enhanced our software program where we now take pictures of all the scrap that comes in besides get the ID we have pictures of the individual selling the scrap.”

The metal is separated in the yard into uniform piles. It's then forcibly mashed or cut into cubes for shipping

“Some of the thicker metals we have cutting torches that basically would take a large sheet of aluminum cut it down into size where it's more manageable where it can be boxed, strapped down onto a pallet for shipment,” says Leavitt.