China is a major producer and consumer of aluminum, with annual aluminum consumption exceeding 50 million tons, of which recycled aluminum accounts for nearly 20%. As an important substitute for primary aluminum, recycled aluminum has seen continuously rising market热度 since the start of this year.

In the Zhejiang Taizhou recycled metal trading market, the scene is bustling as early as six in the morning. Many out-of-town buyers no longer visit the market periodically but simply station themselves on-site to wait for supply. In the past, buyers could carefully select and negotiate at leisure, but now high-quality clean aluminum scrap is extremely scarce, and good material is snapped up as soon as it enters the market, with companies most afraid of running out of feedstock and halting production.

Market sources report that the current shortage is mainly concentrated in high-purity, directly meltable premium aluminum scrap, with prices for this type of material hovering around 20,700 yuan per ton. When a truckload of good material arrives, multiple buyers compete for it simultaneously. The transport side also directly reflects the market conditions, with aluminum scrap freight frequency increasing significantly and cargo turnover speed accelerating greatly. Pang Xiaojie, head of the Zhejiang Taizhou recycled metal trading market, said that dozens of buyers are currently stationed at the market, the market maintains normalized zero inventory, and sales volume has risen about 10% compared with the same period last year.

Multiple drivers are pushing recycled aluminum prices higher. Data from Shanghai Metals Market shows that in March this year, the spot price of ADC12 aluminum alloy reached a high of 24,500 yuan per ton, and in September it once again surged past the 24,000 yuan per ton mark, up about 18% year-on-year. Industry insiders分析 that as the impact of geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East continues to spill over, the global primary aluminum supply gap keeps widening. At the same time, green carbon reduction and the ongoing lightweight transformation of manufacturing are jointly driving recycled aluminum prices higher. Mi Yanbin, an analyst at Fubao Information, introduced that since September recycled aluminum has remained in tight supply, downstream die-casting orders have continued to recover, and overall operating rates have improved, forming a "tight balance" pattern of "marginal demand improvement and insufficient supply elasticity."

The tight balance pattern formed in the spot market comes from continuously released consumer demand downstream. With the rapid expansion of new energy and computing power industries, the market space for recycled aluminum has further expanded. In the aluminum products production workshop of Zhejiang Mingdao Aluminum Co., Ltd., aluminum alloy billets blended with a certain proportion of recycled aluminum undergo multiple processes including melting and rolling before being processed into aluminum sheets and strips needed for the new energy sector. Gao Xianwei, vice president of the company, introduced that multiple production lines are currently operating at full capacity, and orders have been scheduled two months out. "The order increase mainly comes from demand for thermal management materials driven by the rise of new energy storage and AI computing centers. This year, new energy-related orders have grown substantially by 80% year-on-year."

Orders remain full, but high-quality recycled aluminum raw material supply is tight and prices are rising. Some companies have begun expanding overseas procurement channels and trying every possible means to ensure order delivery. Gao Xianwei said, "We have now added overseas import procurement channels for recycled aluminum, and the current procurement volume can reach about 3,000 tons per month." Data shows that China currently has more than 128,000 recycled aluminum-related enterprises, with about 13,100 new registered related enterprises since 2026, covering scrap metal recycling, resource regeneration and utilization, non-ferrous metal smelting, auto parts, and trade services. In the first half of 2026, 32 listed aluminum companies recorded total net profit of 57.723 billion yuan, with more than 90% of them profitable.

With the continued advancement of global green trade, product carbon footprint—the total carbon emissions of a product from upstream raw materials, factory production, downstream use, and end-of-life recycling—has gradually become an important measurement indicator for overseas corporate procurement. Thanks to their low-carbon characteristics, overseas demand for China's recycled aluminum products has continued to rise. Zeng Ting has been engaged in the trade of aluminum alloy wheels for automobiles for 13 years, and what impressed her most this year was more overseas orders and higher profits. She told reporters that wheels made with recycled aluminum materials have a green and low-carbon attribute in the material itself, which has become a bonus point highly valued by overseas buyers. From January to August this year, the company's export value of aluminum alloy wheels reached 83 million yuan, up 24% year-on-year.

According to data from the International Aluminium Institute, producing one ton of primary aluminum can emit up to 16 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, while producing one ton of recycled aluminum emits only about 0.5 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, a reduction of about 95% compared with primary aluminum. Data from the General Administration of Customs shows that from January to August 2026, China's cumulative exports of unwrought aluminum and aluminum products reached 4.665 million tons, up 16.8% year-on-year; among them, cumulative exports of unwrought aluminum alloy, mainly recycled aluminum alloy ingots, reached 342,000 tons, an increase of nearly 85% year-on-year, with single-month export growth in June reaching 160.6%, setting a new high in recent years.