Scrap metal market wrap — August 2026

Restated 2 September 2026. A unit-conversion error in our price fetch understated every MetalpriceAPI-sourced figure by 8.9% from launch until 2 September 2026. The dollar figures below have been recomputed on the corrected basis; percentage movements are unaffected except where noted. See the methodology for details.

August gave back a little of what July delivered. Of the metals we track, only zinc ended the month higher, up 2.7%. Nickel was the weakest at -3.1%, with our derived stainless estimate following it down 2.5%. Copper, brass, aluminium and lead all finished within about 1% of where they started, which on a domestic load is close enough to flat that the day you sold mattered more than the trend.

One thing to say plainly before the numbers. Our daily price fetch stopped after 22 August because of a server fault and did not resume until 1 September, so there are no snapshots for 23 to 31 August. Every “month-end” figure in this article therefore uses 22 August as the last August reading. We have not interpolated or estimated the missing days.

The headline moves

Zinc: $5.18 → $5.32 per kg (+2.7%)

Zinc was the quiet achiever. It opened August at $5.18 per kilogram and was $5.32 on 22 August, with a high of $5.39 on 6 August and a low of $5.18 on 19 August. For most sellers zinc matters through brass, where it is about a third of our estimate.

Nickel: $24.49 → $23.73 per kg (-3.1%)

Nickel drifted lower for most of the month. From $24.49 on 1 August it touched $24.59 on 4 August, slid to a low of $23.55 on 17 August and was $23.73 on 22 August. Because our stainless steel figure is built from the nickel content of 304-grade material plus a fixed chromium allowance, stainless fell in step, from $2.46 to $2.40 per kilogram (-2.5%).

Copper: $20.46 → $20.22 per kg (-1.2%)

Copper opened at $20.46 and was $20.22 on 22 August, a loss of 1.2%. Within that, it rallied to $21.35 on 6 August, faded through the middle of the month, and touched its low of $19.83 on 17 August.

The 17 and 18 August snapshots came from a fallback price source rather than our usual feed. On the restated basis they no longer stand apart from the days either side, so they are treated like any other reading, and the month highs and lows above and below include them.

Brass: $15.42 → $15.31 per kg (-0.7%)

Brass is not quoted as its own contract; our estimate is roughly two-thirds copper and one-third zinc. With copper slightly down and zinc up, the two pulled against each other and brass finished 0.7% lower. Its high was $16.08 on 6 August, tracking copper; its low was $15.03 on 17 August.

Aluminium: $4.54 → $4.51 per kg (-0.7%)

Aluminium spent the month in a narrow band. It opened at $4.54, peaked at $4.78 on 11 August, and was $4.51 on 22 August, a day after its $4.49 low on 21 August.

A general note on all of these figures: we publish in Australian dollars per kilogram, so every number above reflects both the underlying metal price and the AUD/USD exchange rate. A stronger Australian dollar can pull AUD scrap prices lower even when the metal is unchanged in US-dollar terms. We are not attributing August’s softness to any single cause, because currency, global demand and inventory effects can’t be cleanly separated after the fact.

What it means at the weighbridge

Percentages are abstract until they’re on a receipt, so here’s the arithmetic on the same realistic load we used in July. Twenty kilograms of bare bright copper in Sydney, at our published payout rate of 78% of spot for that grade and Sydney’s 1.00× regional benchmark:

• 1 August: $20.46 × 0.78 × 20 kg ≈ $319.16
• 22 August: $20.22 × 0.78 × 20 kg ≈ $315.48

That’s $3.68 less for the same load, or about $15.77 per kilogram at the last August reading.

Timing, again, was worth more than the trend. The same 20 kg would have paid roughly $333.00 at copper’s 6 August high and about $309.35 at its 17 August low — a spread of about $24 on a single small load in a month that looks flat on paper. On a tonne of clean copper that is a four-figure difference. Same lesson as July: sorted, clean material you can hold for a fortnight is worth more than a shed cleared on impulse.

For the other grades people actually bring in, the changes were small. Ten kilograms of yellow brass at 60% of spot went from about $92.51 to $91.84; thirty kilograms of 304 stainless at 55% from about $40.58 to $39.58; fifty kilograms of clean aluminium extrusion at 65% from about $147.64 to $146.59.

The quiet ones

Lead slipped 1.1% from $2.68 to $2.65 per kilogram, finishing level with its 17 August low. Its high was $2.71 on 12 August, a range of about six cents.

Steel needs a caveat rather than a figure. Our steel reference rate is a manually tracked constant, currently $0.42 per kilogram, reviewed quarterly against published Australian yard rate cards rather than fetched daily from an exchange. It was unchanged across August because we didn’t revise it, not because the ferrous market stood still. Treat it as a planning figure, not a market signal.

Where to look next

The first reading after the outage, on 1 September, had copper at $20.01, nickel at $23.32 and zinc at $5.44 per kilogram — so the soft tone at the end of August had not reversed when the feed came back. Those are not August figures, and we repeat the point from the top: with no snapshots between 23 and 31 August, this wrap’s month-end comparisons stop at 22 August, and the gap will show in the price history on each metal’s page, such as copper.

Prices are refreshed daily again, so the figures above are already history — the current prices for all eight metals are the ones that matter if you’re deciding when to sell. To turn today’s rates into a number for your load, the scrap value calculator applies the same payout rates and regional adjustments used throughout this article, and our methodology page sets out how we get from an exchange price to an estimated payout.