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Modernise your scrap metal business with innovative payment processes

Thousands of scrap metal recycling agents across the UK trust Bread4Scrap to make simple and secure cashless payments.

The scrap metal industry is worth £4bn in the UK alone, and continues to grow despite a challenging few years, including a drop in demand as a result of COVID and constraints on the price of scrap metal due to regulatory changes surrounding imports in China. 

High demand means that prices of metals are expected to continue to rise in spite of recent volatility, and a continued shift towards greener manufacturing methods such as EAF steel production is driving ongoing demand for recycled materials. 

While the future looks bright for the scrap metal recycling industry, high demand for metals like steel and aluminium is likely to drive increased competition amongst merchants, and wider market forces mean that while the overall trend is likely to be upwards, there could be some bumps along the way. 

To maximise profitability and performance of your scrap metal business, it’s important to make sure that your payment processes are as efficient and streamlined as possible – this not only reduces your manpower costs, but can help you to effectively manage compliance, keeping your business’s risk levels low.

Better still, an efficient, modern approach can help you deliver a better experience to your customers, encouraging loyalty and repeat business, and helping you stand out against the competition. 

So how can modernising your payments help drive the growth of your scrap metal business?

Make KYC compliance a breeze

With metal theft causing widespread issues from areas as diverse as trains to road signs, scrap metal dealers are subject to a range of legislation to ensure that they’re not inadvertently supporting metal theft. 

The 2013 Scrap Metal Dealers Act makes it illegal to buy scrap metal using cash, and requires dealers to verify the identity of all sellers by confirming photographic ID and proof of address. 

B4B Payments’ Bread4Scrap cards eliminate the need for scrap metal dealers to carry out these checks themselves – we handle it all when customers activate their Bread4Scrap card, and provide a full audit trail in our easy-to-use management platform. So, you can be fully confident that you’re meeting compliance requirements without the need to manually verify your customers’ documents. 

Instant payouts

Without the option to pay cash for scrap metal, dealers are often forced to resort to slower payment options like cheque or bank transfer. This can be frustrating for customers, who have to wait for cheques to clear, or anxiously watch for bank transfers hitting their account, days after their transaction has been completed. While it’s necessary to ensure compliance with Home Office legislation, these old-fashioned payment methods don’t deliver the best customer experience.

Prepaid cards like Bread4Scrap can transform the process. Instead of writing a cheque or sending a bank transfer, funds are loaded instantly onto a prepaid contactless MasterCard which your customers can use instantly. With the ability to spend in millions of physical or online locations worldwide or withdraw cash directly from an ATM, your customers get their funds instantly, with no waiting around. 

Alternatively, if customers don’t want to sign up for a card, you can use Bread4Scrap to make direct bank transfers, with lower transaction costs than your local bank. 

Encourage repeat custom

A huge benefit of a prepaid Bread4Scrap card is that they make repeat custom a breeze. Once a customer has activated their card and passed the Know Your Customer checks, cards can continue to be reloaded with more funds over and over again. 

This means that for existing customers, it’s likely to be far easier to return to your business than to go to a competitor, where they’ll need to go through the hassle of verifying their identity all over again. This encourages your customers to stay with you, in the knowledge that they’ll receive their funds instantly.

Better still – if a customer already has a Bread4Scrap card from another merchant, it’s easy to use the same card to add them to your system with minimal admin. 

Access easy reporting

A strong data strategy is vital to growing your business – understanding trends in performance and customer behaviour can give you the insights you need to spot new opportunities and take advantage of them, boosting your profitability. 

Bread4Scrap’s easy to use management platform gives you a comprehensive data reporting system, so you can easily track transaction data. It also integrates fully with FRED5 as well as a range of market leading accounting platforms, so you can automatically keep all your data in sync without the need to enter details multiple times.  

Transform your payment processes with Bread4Scrap from B4B Payments

Thousands of scrap metal recycling agents across the UK trust Bread4Scrap to make simple and secure cashless payments. With the ability to make fully compliant payments in minutes and no hidden fees, our system helps you stay in line with regulation and deliver an excellent customer experience. 

To find out more about how Bread4Scrap could work for you, get in touch today. 

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Scrap metal compliance: the regulations you need to know

With greater flexibility than a fuel card and no hidden fees, a prepaid card could help you save time and money on fuel and driver expenses.

The scrap metal recycling industry is hugely varied, made up of everything from small, family run firms to international corporations. It’s also a heavily regulated industry, and regardless of the size of your firm, scrap metal dealers need to stay on top of a wide range of different legislation to maintain compliance, with stiff penalties if they’re found to have operated outside of the rules.

B4B Payments’ Bread4Scrap card helps scrap metal recycling companies stay compliant with regards to buying scrap metal, but there’s lots more to be aware of. Here are the main areas of legislation affecting scrap metal dealers in the UK:

The Scrap Metal Dealer’s Act 2013

In 2013, 2% of all police-recorded crime in England and Wales was related to metal theft. The Scrap Metal Dealers’ Act was brought into try and combat this trend. The main elements of the legislation (and similar rules brought in slightly later in Scotland) are as follows:

Licensing of scrap metal traders – The legislation requires that all scrap metal traders hold a license issued by their local authority. Those found trading without a licence face a fine of up to £5000. While the specific regulations in Scotland are slightly different, the main principles are the same. Scrap metal dealers must hold a Metal Dealer’s license issued by their local council, and must keep records of the scrap metal they handle or face a fine. 

Payments for scrap metal – The Scrap Metal Dealer’s Act 2013 also bans cash payments for scrap metal, requiring buyers to pay via cheque, bank transfer or another electronic funds transfer Legislation introduced in Scotland in 2016 also banned the payment of cash for scrap metal in the same way.  

Identity verification – In England, Wales and Scotland, scrap metal dealers must verify the identity of anybody they buy scrap from. This means seeing a valid photo ID like a passport or driver’s license, as well as separate proof of address in the form of a utility bill or bank statement. 

GDPR

While the Scrap Metal Dealer’s Act is the most obvious piece of legislation affecting scrap dealers, the requirement to verify the identity of sellers also increases their responsibilities under the GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulations, with risk of a fine of up to 4% of turnover if they’re not compliant. 

By requiring scrap metal traders to hold copies of their sellers’ identity documents, as well as potentially holding bank details for making bank transfer payments, the regulations place a lot of responsibility onto scrap metal businesses to keep their clients’ data safe and secure from theft or cyber-attack, as well as to ensure that information is only held for as long as necessary. 

While GDPR compliance can seem complicated, the basic principles of data security are fairly simple: ensure that any information on your sellers is held securely, either in a locked filing cabinet or in a secure digital format like a password-protected cloud drive, and ensure that only the people within your organisation who have a need to access this data are able to do so. You should also ensure you have a retention policy in place and periodically clean up old data – the Scrap Metal Dealer’s Act requires that records are kept for three years, after which documents should be securely destroyed or deleted. The Information Commissioner’s Office offers plenty of advice on how to ensure GDPR compliance and hold customer data securely.

Learn More

Environmental regulations

As well as the legal aspects of physically buying scrap metal, traders have a range of responsibilities for how they handle and dispose of materials which could be hazardous to people or to the environment. 

You may need additional permits to handle scrap metal contaminated with hazardous materials, including radioactive materials, plastic, rubber or oil. Special waste such as battery casings, aerosols, fluorescent tubes or waste oil filters may also require that you meet additional compliance requirements when storing, transporting, treating and disposing of it. The End of Life Vehicle Regulations 2004 also require special handling of scrap vehicles to ensure that brake fluid, fuel, oil and other pollutants are removed and stored appropriately. 

Health and Safety

Last but not least, employers have a duty to their employees under Health and Safety regulations, and the realities of the scrap metal trade mean that there are numerous potential hazards that need to be managed to keep workers safe. Scrap metal dealers need to be aware of the potential risks in their business premises, from manual handling and working at height to fire or explosion risks and the potential hazards associated with operating specialist machinery.

Health and Safety breaches carry tough penalties in the UK, with the average health and safety fine in 2018/19 reaching £150,000, and over £54million in total fines issued. That’s not including the potential loss of productivity if employees get hurt, as well as the potential damage to your business’s reputation if things go badly wrong. 

 While Health and Safety gets a bad rap in the UK, compliance is largely based on common sense, and the stereotype of over-eager health and safety measures is mostly untrue. In fact, good Health and Safety management can help to make your business run more efficiently, ensuring that workers are trained in the safest, more effective ways of working and preventing lost productivity and delays due to sub-optimal working practices. 

Get a head start on compliance with Bread4Scrap by B4B Payments

With so many different compliance areas to juggle, scrap metal recycling businesses have a lot on their plates. Thankfully, Bread4Scrap from B4B Payments can take some of the pressure off. By paying scrap metal sellers on a flexible prepaid card, you can ensure you’re compliant with Home Office regulations banning cash payments and, because Bread4Scrap handles customer verification checks for you when a user first activates their card, there’s no need to process or store sensitive information like copies of identity documents, making your GDPR compliance smoother too. 

Thousands of scrap metal recycling agents across the UK trust Bread4Scrap to make simple and secure cashless payments. With the ability to make fully compliant payments in minutes and no hidden fees, our system helps you stay in line with regulation and deliver an excellent customer experience. 

To find out more about how Bread4Scrap could work for you. 

Get in Touch
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Why Brits still don’t know how to recycle

We have to admit – the world’s efforts towards recycling have never been better. Major companies are contributing towards the issue, for example, Adidas, who manufacture shoes from ocean plastic that has been recycled. The bad news: it’s still not enough. Recycling goals are difficult, but many of the issues are extremely easy to overcome. For the UK, there are two significant problems that stand in our way: a lack of education and being too stuck in our ways.

Recycling in the UK

When asked, 60% of Brits said that they make an effort to buy products that have been packaged using recycled materials. So, what’s going wrong?
For one, a study in 2019 discovered that 86% of London citizens want to recycle, but don’t know how.

When the UK first started recycling, all materials were separated. Eventually, recycling became easier, and a system was put in place where people could put everything in a single bin. This would then be separated by members of staff at the recycling centre. However, instead of deciding whether something could be recycled before they tossed it in the bin, people became lazy, meaning lots of recyclable materials were ruined.

Common confusions 

In general, people are unsure as to what plastics are recyclable. This can also be said for wood and metal. An unexpected addition to this list is crisp packets, which are not actually able to be put in a recycling bin. To make matters more confusing, you can actually recycle crisp packets, but you’ll have to find a collection point near your home. Luckily, most UK residents have a collection point within four miles of their address.

But a crisp packet is only small, right? Surely it can’t do that much damage to a recycling bin. However, statistics show that 93% of UK households buy and consume crisps. This is a pretty impressive figure, but one that can cause some serious recycling issues.

Brit’s bad habits

For some reason, many of us assume that magazines can’t be recycled. Just because they’re glossy, they’re still made of paper, meaning this assumption is wrong.

Another classic habit is to recycle our plastic bags. Even if it’s a bag for life, the whole point is to utilise these a number of times, not just to throw them in recycling.

Shredded paper is a no – this will definitely end up at a landfill if it finds itself in one of your recycling bins.

We’ve all seen the battery collection boxes in supermarkets, but how many of us use them? Batteries are not designed to be thrown in the bin, recycling or otherwise. They’re full of lots of harmful chemicals, so make the effort to take them to a collection point or supermarket.

Finally, if you think you’re helping the environment by recycling old clothes, you’re probably wrong. While the sentiment is good, they’ll a quarter of clothes in the UK end up in landfills. Luckily, there are plenty of alternatives for old clothes, Depop being a good one. There are also numerous charities that will take your clothes, and this way, you’re helping someone in need at the same time.

Recycling will always be a tough job and a big one. If you cut back on these small and easily-amended habits, you can contribute to a great cause. Tell your family and friends, and help to combat any recycling mistakes in the UK.

Statistics: https://www.recycling-magazine.com/2020/09/16/un-bin-lievable-brits-still-dont-know-how-to-recycle/

Bread4Scrap has been partnering with scrap metal recyclers in the UK since 2016, and we are here for you, whatever the situation may be. Don’t hesitate to contact us today for guidance.

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The growth of the metal waste industry

According to a metal waste and recycling market analysis, the sector is showing impressive growth rates by 2024. This report utilises primary data, vendor briefing, the scope of the product, and surveys to conduct a detailed study of the industry and its movements.

It also takes into account the effect of Covid-19, which is drastically changing global economies.

The recycling and metal waste market

Metal scrap refers to scrap that is both ferrous and non-ferrous, with ferrous scrap (irons and steels) being generated from old products or manufacturing processes. Non-ferrous scrap, however, usually comes from household appliances, railroad tracks automobiles, and more. These include copper, zinc, lead, and others, and aren’t affected through the process of recycling, meaning they can be recycled again and again without an issue. The research in question focuses on four key examples: iron, copper, aluminium, and lead.

The scope of the report

Metals have high densities meaning they can be efficiently transported, making them one of the first materials to be utilised in the recycling process. In 2018, the scrap recycling industry was worth $26.83 billion in the US, amounting to 120 million tonnes of recycled materials every year.

The report summarises that the recycling industry is expected to reach 688044K MT by 2025, meaning it will have grown at a CAGR of 1.46% since 2017’s statistics.

The metal waste and recycling market worldwide is estimated to increase at a CAGR of 2.9% by 2025, meaning the industry will hit figures of £340,600 million. This is a significant increase from today’s figures.

The report largely focuses on the global market in areas such as South America, the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Africa, distinguishing between different aspects of the market using applications, types, manufacturers, and regions. More specifically, the analysis covers:

• Mexico, Canada, and the US for North America
• Russia, Italy, France, Germany and the UK for Europe
• Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, India, and China for Asia-Pacific
• Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina for South America
• Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE for the Middle East and Africa

As mentioned above, the market is divided into segments. These are packaging, battery, shipbuilding, equipment manufacturing, building and construction, automotive, customer appliances, and others.

Questions the report addresses

This metal waste and recycling analysis is detailed and thorough, answering some of the industry’s major questions, such as:

• What manufacturing technologies do metal waste and recycling make use of?
• How are these technologies developing?
• Which companies are the key players in the recycling and metal waste market?
• What is the current status of the metal waste and recycling market, and what is its competition?
• What is the industry’s estimated cost and profit looking into the future?
• What is the economic impact on the industry?
• How should we strategise to combat these economic impacts?

If you are interested in the growth of metal waste industries, this report is an excellent read. 

Bread4Scrap has been partnering with scrap metal recyclers in the UK since 2016, and we are here for you, whatever the situation may be. Don’t hesitate to speak to our experts today for guidance.

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How Covid-19 is affecting the scrap metal shredder market

With the coronavirus pandemic affecting all aspects of the UK economy, the metal shredder market is no exception. With trade changing across a multitude of countries, the recycling market is near the top of the list of those to be affected. As the scrap market’s functionality is dependent on the prices of metal, a country’s economic position is a key component in its potential growth and success. Here we discuss how Covid-19 is taking a toll on the scrap sector and its businesses:

Changing currency values

Quite simply, if the currency value changes, the price of metal scrap will inevitably be affected and the general metal industry will take a hit. It goes without saying that the global economy is in disarray, and it’ll most likely take time for the value of currencies to be evaluated correctly. Plus, the situation is constantly changing, which makes this even harder to work out. However, the results of this will be crucial for the scrap industry and have the potential to determine the success of its future. This will then have a direct impact on any scrap metal shredders in the market.

Restricted movement

As the Government continues to encourage restricted movement where possible in an attempt to keep the spread of the virus to a minimum, the scrap sector is being hindered. If people are unable or unwilling to move between cities, their metal scrap will stay put along with them.

This means that scrap dealers are more inclined to shut down during the pandemic, which will further affect the scrap metal shredding market, as its revenue growth is limited.

There are small rays of hope, as can be expected with such a regularly changing situation. For example, since China has recently lifted its lockdown, they can now continue to drive the metal scrap market, offering hope for growth in the near future. However, we have seen countries lift their lockdowns only to reinstate it weeks later when cases begin to rise, meaning the situation is extremely precarious.

Shortage of workforce

As mentioned above, many scrap yards have made the decision to close throughout the pandemic. Even those that haven’t are now suffering from a shortage of workforce, meaning they are likely to follow suit. Businesses may be short on money and therefore cannot afford to pay every member of staff, and many people are still afraid to return to work, particularly those who fall in the at-risk category if they were to contract the virus. The Government approach to the scrap metal sector looks to be fairly lenient, with them being more focussed on safety and ensuring essential businesses are able to continue functioning to some degree of normality.

Less demand

As the economy slows to a stop, it is expected that the demand for the scrap market will decrease, meaning production levels will fall. Overall, the changing nature of the coronavirus pandemic leaves the scrap metal shredder market in a state of uncertainty for the foreseeable future.

However, all is not lost!

Bread4Scrap has been partnering with scrap metal recyclers in the UK since 2016, and we are here for you, whatever the situation may be. Don’t hesitate to contact us today for guidance.

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