ISRI nomenclature is the common language of the scrap metal trade. When a yard in Italy, a trader in Rotterdam and a mill in Turkey talk about Berry, HMS or Taldon, they are not using local slang. They are using a shared set of grade names so that a lot can be offered, priced, shipped and melted without arguing about what the metal is supposed to be.
That language comes from the Scrap Specifications Circular, still known across the industry as the ISRI specs. The circular is published by the Recycled Materials Association (ReMA), the US trade body formerly called the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. The organisation changed its name; the grades did not. In contracts, emails and lot titles, people still say ISRI, and that is the nomenclature buyers and sellers expect to see.
What ISRI nomenclature is
ISRI nomenclature is a catalogue of scrap grades. Each grade is a short name plus a written description of the material: what it is made of, how it should be prepared, what may be mixed in and what should be left out. The name is the handle. The description is the specification.
Non-ferrous grades are usually code words. Berry is No. 1 copper wire. Birch is No. 2 copper wire. Honey is yellow brass. Taldon is baled aluminium used beverage cans. Zorba is shredded non-ferrous recovered from fragmentisers. Ferrous grades are more often numbered. ISRI 200 is No. 1 heavy melting steel. 204 is No. 2 heavy melting steel. 211 is shredded steel. Stainless and other alloys have their own names, such as Sabot for 18-8 stainless solids.
The circular is a guideline, not a statute. Nobody is legally forced to use it. Its force comes from contract. Parties incorporate an ISRI grade into an offer or a purchase order, and that grade then defines the bargain: chemistry, size, packing, and the impurities that will trigger a claim. If the delivered metal does not match the named spec, the dispute is about a published description rather than about two different memories of a phone call.
ISRI is not the only scrap vocabulary in Europe. Mills and national associations also work with local preparation rules and with European ferrous specifications. In cross-border trade, though, ISRI remains the lingua franca. A lot posted as Birch or HMS 1&2 (80/20) can be read in any language because the code already carries the meaning.
Who uses ISRI specifications
Yards use ISRI nomenclature when they sort. A magnet split is only the first cut, ferrous from non-ferrous. After that the material has to be named so the next buyer knows what is on the truck. Calling a pile “copper” is not enough. Berry and Birch are different preparations and different prices. The same is true of aluminium extrusions versus mixed castings, or HMS versus shredded.
Traders and brokers use the names to make offers that can be compared. An enquiry for “copper scrap” will produce answers that cannot be stacked. An enquiry for Birch, or for No. 2 copper wire as per ISRI, produces offers that a buyer can rank on price, quantity, packing and delivery. That is why international emails are full of these short words. They compress a paragraph of specification into a token both sides already know.
Mills, foundries, smelters and remelters use ISRI grades as a furnace recipe. A steelworks charging HMS needs a known density and a limit on dirt, tin and copper. A copper refinery taking Berry expects high-purity wire, not motors and not tin-bearing alloys. If the inbound scrap is specified, the melt is predictable. If it is not, the plant discovers the problem after the heat is made.
The same names travel with the logistics. Freight, insurance and sometimes customs documents repeat the grade so the cargo is identified in a way that survives a change of language and a change of handler. Inspectors and surveyors, when a quality claim is opened at discharge, check the material against the ISRI description that was written into the contract. The nomenclature is useful precisely because it is public. Anyone in the chain can look up what was supposed to be on board.
Why ISRI grades matter
They matter because scrap is not a single commodity. Steel, copper, aluminium and brass are different metals, and each of those metals is traded in several preparations. Without a shared nomenclature, every lot would need a private essay: origin, analysis, size, moisture, attachments, painted or clean. That essay would still be read differently in Milan and in Duisburg. A named ISRI grade is shorter and harder to misunderstand.
They matter for price. The spread between neighbouring grades is often the profit in the trade. No. 1 and No. 2 copper wire, new aluminium extrusions and mixed castings, HMS 1 and HMS 2 are not interchangeable, and the market does not pay them as if they were. If a seller uses a vague title, the buyer will assume the worse preparation and bid accordingly. If the title matches a known spec, the lot can be valued against the correct reference.
They matter when something goes wrong. Claims about dirt, moisture, off-grade pieces, sealed units or excessive attachments are settled faster when both sides can point to the same circular. The alternative is a negotiation with no baseline, which is slow and usually expensive for whoever has already paid freight.
They also matter for how lots are published and found. A European buyer scanning for stainless solids or for shredded non-ferrous is searching by the names the mill already uses. A listing that says only “mixed metal” will be skipped. A listing that names the ISRI grade, and then the city and the quantity, can be read in seconds. That is the point of a specification: not to decorate a lot, but to make it tradable.
ISRI nomenclature will not tell you whether a particular truck is honest. Analysis, photos, documents and the reputation of the company still do that work. What the grades do is put buyer and seller on the same page before the metal moves. In a market that crosses borders every day, that shared page is the difference between a clean deal and a long argument about what was sold.