A Practical Guide to Exporting Scrap Metal from the USA

The United States is one of the world's largest sources of recovered metal, and there is steady international demand for it. That combination tempts a lot of first-time exporters — yards, dealers, and small trading companies — into cross-border deals before they understand what a clean transaction looks like. The material almost always sells. Whether it ships, gets paid for, and doesn't blow up into a dispute depends on a handful of unglamorous decisions made before anything leaves the yard.

Start with the grade specification, not the grade name

Every scrap deal begins with agreeing what the material actually is — and grade names alone don't do that. A buyer in one country and a seller in another can both say 'shred' or 'mixed copper' and mean measurably different things. The specification is what makes the contract enforceable: the alloy or metal family, the physical form (loose, baled, sheared, briquetted), the size range where it matters to the buyer's furnace or shredder, and hard numbers for contamination — attachments, coatings, oil, moisture, and non-metallic content. Numbers, not adjectives. 'Clean' is not a spec; '2% maximum non-metallic by weight' is.

The core export documents

A scrap export runs on a small, predictable set of documents. Each one has a job, and buyers, banks, and customs authorities all read them against each other, so they need to agree:

• Commercial invoice — the commercial heart of the deal: parties, material description matching the spec, quantity, unit price, Incoterm and named place, currency, and payment terms. Customs on both ends value the shipment from this.
• Packing list — how the goods are physically made up: number of bales or containers, gross and net weights, and markings. It lets everyone reconcile what was loaded against what was invoiced.
• Certificate of origin — states the country where the material originated, often needed for the buyer's customs clearance and any duty treatment; frequently issued or certified by a chamber of commerce.
• Bill of lading — issued by the carrier, it is the contract of carriage and the document of title. Whoever holds the original negotiable bill controls the cargo, which is why it sits at the center of secure payment methods.

Depending on the metal and the destination, additional paperwork can apply — radiation or contamination certificates, weighbridge tickets, and destination-specific import permits. The principle holds regardless: the documents must describe one consistent shipment. A packing list that disagrees with the bill of lading is how containers end up stranded at a port accruing demurrage.

Inspect at origin, choose your Incoterm deliberately

Third-party inspection at the point of loading — grade verification, weights, and photographs before the container is sealed — costs a small fraction of one rejected load, and once material has crossed an ocean the exporter's leverage to resolve a dispute is largely gone. On terms, the Incoterms rules define exactly where risk and cost pass from seller to buyer. FOB (free on board) leaves the buyer responsible for ocean freight and marine insurance from the loading port; CIF (cost, insurance and freight) puts those on the seller to the destination port. Neither is 'better' — but signing CIF while pricing as if it were FOB is a common and expensive first-timer mistake.

Counterparties and payment

Diligence on the other side is the real protection. Verify registrations and the importer-of-record obligations on the destination end, start with a trial quantity even when volume economics are tempting, and match the payment instrument to the trust level — documentary collections and letters of credit exist precisely so that release of documents (and therefore the cargo) is tied to payment. A counterparty who resists inspection, resists a trial load, or pushes for open-account terms on a first deal is telling you something.

The pitfalls that recur

• Vague specifications that mean different things to buyer and seller — the single most common source of disputes.
• Documents that don't reconcile with each other, causing customs holds and demurrage.
• Skipping origin inspection to save a few hundred dollars, then arguing about grade after arrival.
• Misreading the Incoterm and discovering freight or insurance was your responsibility all along.
• Going to full volume on an unproven counterparty because the per-ton math looked irresistible.

None of this is exotic. A first export that goes smoothly looks boring from the outside: the spec was tight, the documents agreed, the material was inspected before it sailed, and the payment terms matched the relationship. Boring is the goal.