📚 Scrap Grades — The Complete Guide

Why Grades Exist

Melting scrap is not one commodity — it is hundreds. A furnace buying material needs to know exactly what it will get: the chemistry, the physical size, the density, and the level of contamination. Grades are the shared language that lets a seller in one country and a mill in another agree on a cargo without inspecting every piece.

Two systems dominate international trade: the code-word specifications published by ReMA (the Recycled Materials Association, formerly ISRI) used across most of the world, and the European steel scrap specification used within the EU. National standards sit alongside them in markets like China, Japan, and India.

Ferrous Grades

HMS 1 and HMS 2 — heavy melting steel, the backbone of the export trade, usually sold blended as 80:20 or 90:10. Our dedicated guide covers the distinction in detail: HMS 1 & 2 grades →

Shredded scrap — fist-sized, dense, consistent fragments from shredder plants; prized by electric furnaces for fast, predictable melting. Busheling — clean new production offcuts from stamping and manufacturing, the highest-value common grade. Plate & structural — heavy demolition and fabrication steel cut to furnace size.

Non-Ferrous Grades

Copper grades run from bare bright wire down through Berry, Birch, and Cliff qualities to insulated wire recovered for chopping — covered in our copper grades guide →

Aluminium trades under code words for old sheet, cast, extrusions, used beverage cans, and wheels — see the aluminium grades guide →. Brass, zinc, and stainless each carry their own families of grades, described on our brass, zinc, and stainless pages.

The Official Reference

This site describes grades editorially, in plain language. The contractual definitions — the exact code words and their wording — are published by ReMA in its Scrap Specifications Circular, and serious buyers and sellers work from that document. Read more in our ReMA (ISRI) specifications guide →