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As more and more players in the secondary aluminium market look towards closures and cutbacks, a gap will be created for “reliable partners”, Davide Giannotti, purchasing manager at Italian company Profilglass, told Metal Bulletin.
“If you are one of them [a reliable partner], you can get scrap at a good price,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of Metal Bulletin’s 20th International Recycled Aluminium Conference in Salzburg.
“There are some producers that are closing or they are producing more than they can sell.”
Furthermore, for those companies producing ingots for the automotive or the aerospace industry, scrap prices – for example, floated frag or commercial cast – remain relatively high as supplies are tight, while ingot prices have fallen.
However, for semi-finished producers that use more specialised grades of scrap but from a broader range of sources – such as Profilglass – the pricing environment may be more favourable, Giannotti said.
“We use 30% primary ingots and 70% scrap. It could be from local or international sources – Europe, the Middle East, South America, from wherever we can find it,” he said.
“We have no shortage of scrap. We can find it and we can find it easily. We get it from as many different sources as possible.”
Like any other company, meanwhile, Profilglass is wary of the continuing debt problems in Europe – especially in Italy – and must face the possibility of increasing defaults.
Nevertheless, it is still planning to make greater use of “closed loops”, in which it reuses the scrap from its own production.
“You can control the source and you can link the customers to the suppliers. The quality of the product is better,” Giannotti said.
Claire Hack chack@metalbulletin.com Twitter: @clairehack_mb