Most internationally traded melting scrap moves in ordinary shipping containers. Here is how loading works and what decides how many tonnes fit in a box.
Most internationally traded melting scrap moves in ordinary shipping containers. Here is how loading works and what decides how many tonnes fit in a box.
Container shipping opened the scrap trade to any yard within reach of a port. Instead of assembling a 30,000-tonne bulk cargo, a processor can sell a single 20-footer. The great containerized flows — into South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia — are built on this flexibility.
Dense grades favour 20-foot containers, which reach their road-legal and payload weight limits long before they run out of space. Light, bulky grades — turnings, loose sheet — may justify 40-footers.
The binding constraint is almost always weight, not volume. A 20-foot box commonly carries in the low-to-mid twenties of tonnes of dense scrap depending on the container’s rated payload and, critically, the road weight limits at both the origin and destination — many trade lanes load to a conservative figure because the receiving country’s trucking rules cap the gross weight.
Loading is done by grab, magnet, or excavator, with material tamped and distributed to keep the load even. An unevenly loaded box can be rejected at the terminal or damage the container floor.
Every packed container needs a Checked Gross Mass (VGM) under the international SOLAS rules before it can be loaded aboard a vessel. Weighbridge tickets at loading, and weighbridge or draft checks at destination, are the basis on which weight claims are settled.
Sellers photograph containers at stages of loading — empty, half, full, and doors-closed with the seal visible — as standard evidence of what was shipped. The seal number appears across the shipping documents.
Overweight boxes stopped at terminal gates, moisture picked up from rain-exposed stockpiles, prohibited items hidden in the load (pressurised cylinders and munitions are the notorious dangers), and radiation alarms at port scanners are the classic loading-stage failures. Disciplined yard practice — covered storage, radiation checks before loading, and trained loading crews — prevents most of them.
This page is a general guide. Requirements may change; check the relevant authority's current information before relying on them.
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