India is one of the largest and fastest-growing scrap importers. This guide gathers the conditions an exporter meets: pre-shipment inspection, radiation checks, the hazardous-waste rules for mixed material, the BIS quality-control orders that touch some products, and customs practice at the ports.
India is one of the largest and fastest-growing scrap importers. This guide gathers the conditions an exporter meets: pre-shipment inspection, radiation checks, the hazardous-waste rules for mixed material, the BIS quality-control orders that touch some products, and customs practice at the ports.
India’s scrap imports are governed by its foreign trade policy, its hazardous and other wastes rules, customs law and, for some finished products, Bureau of Indian Standards quality-control orders. Clean metal scrap (ferrous, copper, aluminium, brass, stainless, zinc) is importable freely by any registered importer, subject to inspection; mixed, contaminated or hazardous scrap, batteries and e-waste are importable only by licensed recyclers and in some cases not at all.
The Material Recycling Association of India is the trade body through which changes are usually explained, and the Directorate General of Foreign Trade and the Central Pollution Control Board are the authorities that publish the rules.
The pre-shipment inspection certificate from an agency registered with the Indian authorities is the central document; cargoes without one are held. Customs also checks the radiation certificate or screens the container, the invoice, the packing list and the bill of lading, and may call for a physical examination. Metal scrap from certain origins or in certain forms has at times needed additional declarations about explosives and war materiel, following incidents with ammunition scrap. The container freight stations at Nhava Sheva, Mundra, Chennai and Kolkata are where these checks happen.
Customs duty on scrap has been set at low or nil rates for most ferrous and non-ferrous scrap to support the recycling industry, with the goods and services tax applying on import; rates change with each budget and should be checked. BIS quality-control orders apply to some steel and non-ferrous products made from scrap rather than to scrap itself, but they affect what the mills can sell and therefore what they buy. India has also discussed a scrap-recycling policy and a vehicle-scrapping programme intended to raise domestic supply.