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Export boom for scrap metal
published: Monday | June 19, 2006
Edmond Campbell, Senior News Coordinator
PILES OF old cars and other discarded metals parked in junkyards are slowly being converted into a multimillion-dollar export industry.
Executive Director of the National Solid Waste Manage-ment Authority, Errol Greene, told a recent meeting of the Lions Club of Kingston, that there was a huge demand for scrap metal. He could not say how much scrap metal was leaving the country, but indicated that tonnes of the junk were regularly collected and crammed into containers at the Riverton Landfill.
Paul Bonner, the chief technical officer at Caribbean Casting 2001 Limited, which uses scrap metal to manufacture equipment and fittings for the sugar industry and for plumbing works, estimates that about 20,000 tonnes of scrap metal leave the country's shores each year.
STRUGGLE
He told The Gleaner that in the past two years, Caribbean Casting has struggled to get scrap metals at $1,800 per tonne, as the cost had moved up by almost 100 per cent, to more than $3,000.
"In the past year the movement of scrap metal out of the island has increased significantly," he informed, adding that the search to collect the metals has widened.
Export boom for scrap metal