According to the statistics, 1.39 billion dollars worth of junk was imported into Mexico in 2022, an 8.7% increase over 2021. According to a SteelOrbis examination of information from the national statistics office Inegi, this amount is a historical record.
The value of scrap metal imported into Mexico exceeded $1 billion for the second consecutive year in 2021, rising 119.2 percent from $583,582 million in 2020 to $1.28 billion.
Only 14 times in Mexican history has the value of imported scrap exceeded $100 million per month. Even Nevertheless, the value of imported scrap increased 12.4 times between 1994 and last year (1994-2022), from $112 million in 1994 to $1.39 billion in 2018.
Last year, it exceeded $100 million in seven months, reaching a record-breaking $189 million in May, despite only importing $71.4 million in December.
According to Máximo Vedoya, the global CEO of Ternium, imports will keep rising if the Italian-Argentinean company Ternium builds its new $2.2 billion mill in Mexico to produce 2.6 million tonnes of the slab that will need to be produced by the new direct reduction iron (DRI) plant, which could take a mix of 65 percent DRI and 35 percent scrap.
Exports of scrap totaled $489 million in 2022, a 12.5 percent increase over 2021. Despite the fact that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's administration banned it in October 2022 according to
Export Import Data.
However, in annual comparison, in October it declined 23.4 percent to $29.4 million, in November it fell 44.8 percent to $23.3 million, and in December it declined 31.4 percent to $32.7 million.
