Malaysia has become a scrap metal hub in recent years. The country importing aluminum scrap and copper scrap from the US and Europe and then reprocessing them into a form that is acceptable for China.

Currently, China only allows high-quality scrap imports due to environmental issues. Malaysia worries that it will become a country with dumped scrap in Asia, and therefore proposed stricter restrictions on scrap metal imports this year.

According to the Chairman of the Malaysia Non-Ferrous Metals Association (MNMA), Malaysia is one of the important countries that process scrap metals such as insulated copper wire (ICW) and shredded aluminum scrap (zorba).

However, the proposed guidelines issued by the Standard and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM) ask that the metal content of ferrous and non-ferrous scrap should be at least 94.75%, which means that high-value ICW can’t be imported into Malaysia.