Scrap Metal Prices, Australia

Australia's scrap metal prices are driven by international commodity markets, not local demand. The eight metals tracked here — copper, aluminium, brass, steel, stainless steel, lead, zinc, and nickel — together account for the overwhelming majority of metal that passes through Australian scrap yards each year.

Five of these (copper, aluminium, zinc, nickel, and lead) trade directly on the London Metal Exchange, the global benchmark for industrial metals. Their prices update every trading day and feed directly into what your local yard can pay. The other three are derived: brass is an alloy of roughly two-thirds copper and one-third zinc, so it tracks those two metals; stainless steel's value comes mostly from its nickel content; and scrap steel, while not traded as a single LME contract, follows global iron and ferrous markets closely enough to track with a reference rate.

The gap between metals is enormous. A kilogram of clean copper pays more than thirty times what a kilogram of steel pays, which is why sorting and separating a mixed load is almost always worth the effort. The pages below break down each metal's grades — from bare bright copper down to insulated wire, from extrusion aluminium down to mixed cast — and explain how Australian yards assess quality at the weighbridge. Prices shown are LME-anchored estimates updated daily; see our methodology for exactly how each figure is derived.