BIR Report

A Problem to be Contained

Bashar Ehsan and his colleagues at United Arab Emirates-based Ala Metals LLC were having the same problem as many nonferrous scrap companies who ship through Hong Kong: Containers were arriving at their destinations with copper scrap missing but with the container’s seal unbroken.

According to information presented at the International Trade Council meeting at the 2012 BIR (Bureau of International Recycling) World Convention, Ehsan said that throughout 2011 and 2012 containers shipped from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, through the Port of Hong Kong to China had been arriving at their destinations with weight shortages “ranging from 200 kilograms to 10 metric tons.”

Different shipping lines and different buyers were involved, but “the seals always remain intact and the weight shortages are consistent” when the containers are shipped through Hong Kong and then forwarded to a destination in China, Ehsan said.

The company’s tracking procedures and investigation have pointed to the containers’ overland journey from the River Trade Terminal through the New Territories in Hong Kong as the likely weak link in the security chain, he said.

According to Ala Metals’ findings, the containers are diverted by truck drivers to scrap yards in the Tin Shui Wai neighborhood of Hong Kong. “In these scrap yards, the thieves have time and expertise to break the hub bolt of the seal handle or rivet of the locking rod without breaking the original shipping line seal,” Ehsan said.

Marc Beerlandt of the Antwerp office of Mediterranean Shipping Co. (MSC) also pointed to organized rings as the culprit for container break-ins, noting that it is a crime that starts with “communication leaks.”

MSC will soon introduce an “E-seal,” a tracking device and system.

Former Recycling International writer Gert van der Have offered another example of fraud in the recycling industry. He presented information on the case of a con artist who created a phony scrap company (complete with a website that included photos of other companies’ scrap yards) and then succeeded in collecting payment on several shipments of material that never took place. Roughly 12 companies were defrauded of $10 million.

The 2012 BIR World Recycling Convention was May 30 to June 1 at the Rome Cavalieri Hotel in Italy.
 

BIR Releases Updated Global Ferrous Statistics

The Ferrous Division of the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR), Brussels, has released the third edition of its “World Steel Recycling in Figures” brochure.

The BIR had print versions of the 28-page brochure available in late May and early June at the BIR World Recycling Congress in Rome. A PDF version of the brochure, which covers the five-year period from 2007 to 2011, is available at www.bir.org/assets/PressReleases/416RomeFerrous-Statistics.pdf.

BIR Ferrous Division President Christian Rubach says the division is aware of the importance of reliable figures and will strive to continue to publish the statistics on both a yearly and quarterly basis.

Among the findings in 2011 specifically, the BIR reports the world’s steelmakers consumed some 570 million metric tons of ferrous scrap in 2011 while the United States exported some 24.4 million metric tons in 2011.