COMEX copper is trading at about $6.74 a pound, up 52.7 percent over twelve months and at the top of its own 52-week range. Our derived board puts clean number 1 copper scrap at $5.86 a pound, or 86.9 percent of the exchange price. The bigger story for scrappers is not the rally but the policy behind it: copper scrap is currently outside the US tariff regime, and a federal review could change that.
Scrap Price Today market analysis, written from exchange settlement data, mill and refiner pricing practice and published policy documents. Figures are examples; today’s numbers are on the live scrap price board.
Most copper coverage is written for traders. This is written for the person holding the metal, and it separates three things that get mixed together: what the exchange is doing, what your board is doing, and what governments are deciding about scrap specifically.
Where the price actually is
Our benchmark layer pulls COMEX copper daily and derives the indicative scrap board from it. Measured from that series, the moves look like this.
- Five sessions: up 2.4 percent.
- One month: up 4.6 percent.
- Three months: up 6.0 percent.
- Twelve months: up 52.7 percent.
- Three years: up 79.5 percent.
The 52-week low was $4.46 a pound, set twelve months ago almost to the day. The high is today. That is an unusual shape: not a spike, but a year-long climb with the top at the end of it.
For context on how far this has run, the exchange touched a record intraday level in the spring, and the market has spent much of the year making fresh highs rather than trading a range.
What our board shows underneath the exchange
The number that matters at a scale is not the exchange price but the share of it that reaches you. Today’s derived board, alongside the COMEX benchmark, looks like this.
| Number 1 copper | Brass | Copper radiators | Insulated wire | Low-grade cable | Electronic scrap | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Measurement | USD per lb, indicative | USD per lb, indicative | USD per lb, indicative | USD per lb, indicative | USD per lb, indicative | USD per lb, indicative |
| Today’s level | $5.86 | $3.57 | $3.37 | $2.83 | $1.89 | $0.81 |
| Share of COMEX copper | 86.9% | 53.0% | 50.0% | 42.0% | 28.0% | 12.0% |
| Why the gap | Refining recovery, freight, margin | Zinc content and alloy discount | Mixed metal, plastic and steel removal | Copper recovery after stripping | Low copper share by weight | Very low metal share, high processing |
That table is the practical answer to the commonest complaint at a yard. A board at 86.9 percent of the exchange is not a yard taking advantage; it is the recovery share a refiner pays for clean grades, minus freight, processing and margin. Our full derivation is published on the editorial policy page.
Copper moves; steel does not
We measured the last 126 trading sessions across three derived series to see how differently the metals actually behave. The result is sharper than most sellers expect.
- Copper moved by more than one percent on 67 of 126 sessions, with an average daily move of 1.23 percent and a largest single move of 4.81 percent.
- Aluminium was more volatile still: 71 sessions over one percent, averaging 1.54 percent, with a largest move of 8.24 percent.
- Steel moved by more than one percent on 5 sessions out of 126, averaged 0.26 percent a day, and was completely unchanged on 52 of them.
That is why timing advice cannot be the same for both. Watching a copper board daily is rational. Watching a steel board daily is not, because it is a mill program that steps rather than a market that trades, as our steel scrap article sets out.
Why the price is up: supply, not just demand
The International Copper Study Group cut its world mine production growth forecast after accidents at the Grasberg mine in Indonesia and the Kamoa complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the market has been repricing supply risk ever since.
The group’s balance forecast has swung twice. It moved from an expected surplus to a projected deficit of about 150,000 tonnes for the current year, then reversed again in the spring to a projected surplus of roughly 96,000 tonnes, on weaker demand growth and higher secondary output.
That second revision is the one scrappers should read twice. Part of what flipped the balance back to surplus was recycled supply: the ICSG expects secondary refined production, the copper made from scrap, to grow considerably faster than primary next year. Your material is now a visible part of the world supply balance rather than a footnote.
The trade story, which is really two stories
The United States imposed a 50 percent tariff on semi-finished copper products such as pipe, wire, rod, sheet and tube, and on copper-intensive derivative goods including cables and connectors. That measure was later restructured to apply to the full customs value of covered articles rather than only their metal content, and adjusted again in early summer.
Critically for anyone reading a scrap board: copper input materials and copper scrap were not included. Ores, concentrates, cathodes, anodes and scrap sit outside the duty, which is why a tariff headline does not move a yard price the way it moves a manufacturer’s input cost.
The second story is the one that could. The Commerce report underlying the proclamation recommended more than the tariff that was adopted, including a phased universal duty on refined copper of 15 percent and later 30 percent, a domestic sales requirement of 25 percent for high-quality copper scrap, and export controls on high-quality copper scrap.
Those scrap measures were recommended, not enacted. The proclamation directed Commerce to report back on domestic copper markets by the end of June, after which duties on refined copper may be determined. No decision had been published when this page was last updated.
What a domestic sales requirement would mean at a yard
It is worth understanding the mechanism, because it is the single policy that would change scrap pricing directly rather than indirectly.
A domestic sales requirement obliges a share of high-quality scrap to be offered to US consumers rather than exported. Export controls would go further. Both would increase the supply available to domestic refiners and reduce competition from overseas buyers.
More sellers competing for fewer buyers usually means a wider discount to the exchange price. Sellers in markets with export restrictions already live with that: our Saudi Arabia and South Africa pages describe boards that sit structurally below world parity for exactly this reason.
This is not a prediction that it will happen. It is the mechanism to watch if it does.
Key numbers
- COMEX copper is at roughly $6.74 a pound, up 52.7 percent over twelve months, with a 52-week low of $4.46 (Scrap Price Today derived series from COMEX daily settlements).
- Our indicative number 1 copper board sits at 86.9 percent of the exchange price today; insulated wire at 42 percent and low-grade cable at 28 percent.
- Copper moved more than one percent on 67 of the last 126 sessions; steel did so on 5 (Scrap Price Today series analysis).
- The United States relied on imports for about 57 percent of refined copper consumption, according to US Geological Survey data cited by the Congressional Research Service.
- Exchange inventories have rebuilt substantially from their low earlier in the year, with LME-monitored stocks around 238,600 tonnes in late August, roughly 16 percent above the February trough.
- The International Copper Study Group expects secondary refined copper production, made from scrap, to grow faster than primary production next year.
How to use this if you are selling
- Compare your quote with the 86.9 percent figure, not with the exchange headline. A clean copper quote materially below that band is worth a second call.
- Strip heavy cable. The gap between number 1 copper at $5.86 and low-grade cable at $1.89 is the widest it has been in this cycle, and stripping moves material across it.
- Do not wait for a target price. The series above has made twelve months of higher highs, and every level along the way looked like a peak at the time.
- If you export or sell to an exporter, follow the Commerce review rather than the tariff headlines. That is where scrap-specific policy would come from.
- Outside the United States, watch your currency alongside the metal. Today the same benchmark converts at 0.74 to the pound, 95.59 to the rupee, 123.17 to the taka and 15.99 to the rand, and those rates move local boards on days when copper does nothing.
What this metal pays around the world
Scrap is a global market priced in US dollars, but what reaches a seller depends on trade position, freight to the nearest consumer and how many buyers compete locally. The table below converts the same grade into each market’s own currency and units at the day’s exchange rate, and shows the factor we apply.
| Market | Local price | USD per lb | Market factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turkey | ₺645.55 / kg | $6.04 | 1.04 |
| Germany | €11.25 / kg | $5.93 | 1.02 |
| United States | $5.81 / lb | $5.81 | 1.00 |
| China | CN¥84.35 / kg | $5.69 | 0.98 |
| Canada | C$7.79 / lb | $5.64 | 0.97 |
| United Kingdom | £9.10 / kg | $5.58 | 0.96 |
| Australia | A$16.89 / kg | $5.52 | 0.95 |
| United Arab Emirates | AED44.69 / kg | $5.52 | 0.95 |
| Saudi Arabia | SAR44.67 / kg | $5.40 | 0.93 |
| India | ₹1,114 / kg | $5.35 | 0.92 |
| Bangladesh | ৳1,386 / kg | $5.11 | 0.88 |
| South Africa | R173.74 / kg | $4.94 | 0.85 |
How we produced these figures
The price series behind this article is our own. We pull COMEX copper daily, derive each scrap grade using published recovery shares, and store a five-year daily series, currently 1,258 trading days. Percentage changes are measured between daily closes; the volatility comparison uses the most recent 126 sessions across the copper, aluminium and steel series.
Anyone can check the current figures on the live board and the charts, and the derivation, including every recovery share, is published on the editorial policy page. Where we cite outside data, it is named and dated in the text rather than described vaguely, so you can go and verify it.
The policy detail in this article comes from the presidential proclamation on copper imports published in the Federal Register and from Congressional Research Service summaries of the Section 232 copper measures.