A scrap lot does not go from a demolition site into a furnace on its own. It moves through companies that collect it, sort it, upgrade it, finance it and melt it. In Europe those companies are usually called yards, traders, mills, processors or brokers. The words appear on letterheads and on join forms. They describe a role, not a rank.
Knowing the role tells you who has metal on the ground, who is taking price risk, and who will actually charge a furnace. A lot of confusion in this trade is just two people using the same word for different jobs.
What a yard is
A yard is a physical scrap operation. It has a gate, a weighbridge, a magnet, a shear or a baler, and a floor where metal is sorted. The yard buys from demolition contractors, factories, other recyclers and, in some countries, from smaller collectors. It sells prepared grades to traders, processors and mills.
The yard’s work is preparation. Mixed incoming scrap is split into ferrous and non-ferrous, then into named grades. Beams are cut to charging size. Sheet is baled. Copper cable is stripped or set aside for a granulator. Dirt, wood and sealed units come off the pile because a mill will not pay for them.
A yard takes title. Once the truck is on the scale and the ticket is signed, the metal is theirs. That is why yards care about analysis, moisture and attachments: they own the next claim. Large European yards may also shred or granulate. At that point they are also processors. The name on the gate does not change the fact that the first job of a yard is to turn a mixed intake into a tradable lot.
What a trader is
A trader buys scrap and sells scrap. The trader takes title, like a yard, but often has little or no processing plant. The inventory may sit at a third-party warehouse, at the seller’s yard on a call-off, or on a vessel. The product is a position: a grade, a quantity, a delivery window and a price.
Traders exist because mills do not want to buy every 20-tonne truck from every small yard, and many yards do not want to finance a 5,000-tonne cargo to Turkey. The trader sits in the middle: aggregates, pays, books freight, and carries the quality risk between the two. If the discharge assay is Birch instead of Berry, it is the trader’s claim, not the mill’s problem with the original yard.
A trading desk can be next to a yard or it can be a company with a phone and a credit line. In both cases the test is the same: do they own the metal, and can they deliver what they offered? Offers written in ISRI nomenclature are how traders compare parcels across borders.
What a mill is
A mill is a steelworks. It melts scrap, or scrap plus iron, and rolls new steel. Electric-arc furnaces run mainly on scrap. Basic-oxygen plants use scrap as a coolant and a supplement to hot metal. In either case the mill is the end of the ferrous chain: the lot that goes in does not come out as scrap again until the next product dies.
Mills buy to a recipe. HMS 1, HMS 1&2 80/20, shredded 211, busheling: those ISRI scrap codes are furnace inputs, not catalogue decoration. Copper, tin, dirt and oversize pieces that a yard can live with will stop a heat or open a claim. That is why mill buyers are strict about specification, size and residual chemistry, and why they prefer regular suppliers to one-off mixed piles.
On ScrapEurope, mill is the company type for that furnace buyer. The same commercial role exists for other metals, under different plant names.
Foundries, smelters and remelters
A steel mill is not the only plant that consumes scrap. Iron and steel foundries melt scrap into castings. Copper smelters and refiners take wire, solids and refinery grades back to cathode. Aluminium remelters and rolling-mill scrap units take extrusions, used beverage cans and cast. Brass mills and zinc plants do the same for their metals.
These companies are not yards and they are not traders. They are consumers. They have impurity limits, furnace types and product specifications, just as a steelworks does. A copper refinery that asked for Berry will not take Honey. An aluminium remelter that asked for Tata will not take Tense. The plant name changes; the logic does not.
If your company melts metal into a specified product, you are on the mill side of the market even if the letterhead says foundry or smelter.
What a processor is
A processor upgrades scrap. The plant is built around a machine: a fragmentiser, a shear-baler, a cable granulator, a media or sensor-sort line, a decoater. Incoming material is mixed or low-grade. Outgoing material is a named concentrate: shredded steel, Zorba, Twitch, chopped copper, clean 6063.
Processing is where value is created after the first sort. Insulated cable becomes Clove or a recovery grade. End-of-life vehicles become 211 plus a non-ferrous fraction. Mixed aluminium becomes a furnace-ready product. The processor sells that product to mills, remelters and traders.
Many large yards are processors. The distinction is useful when the company does not run a public gate trade and exists to upgrade a stream: a cable plant, a shredder that takes in from other yards, a Zorba sorter. If the money is in changing the material, not only in moving it, the company is processing.
What a broker is
A broker introduces a buyer and a seller. The broker usually does not take title and does not run a yard. The fee is a commission, a difference, or a retainer. The metal never sits on the broker’s books.
That is the difference from a trader. A trader owns the lot and is on the hook for quality, payment and delivery. A broker is on the hook for the introduction. In a clean deal the mill still pays the yard, or the trader still pays the yard; the broker is paid for making the match.
Brokers are useful when a company is new to a grade, a country or a mill. They are less useful when both sides already know each other and the lot is standard. If someone says they are a broker and then invoices you for the metal, they are trading. The word on the card matters less than whether title passed.
How a lot travels
A typical ferrous lot starts at demolition or at a factory. A yard weighs it in, cuts or shreds it, and names the grade. A trader may buy that prepared scrap and sell a larger cargo to a mill. A broker may have made the first call. A processor may have sat between the yard and the trader if the metal needed a shredder or a sort line.
A typical non-ferrous lot is shorter and more expensive per tonne. A yard or a processor prepares Berry, Tata or Honey. A trader or the yard itself sells it to a smelter or remelter. The number of hands is not a virtue. Each extra hop costs money and opens a quality argument. Direct deals between a prepared yard and a consuming plant are common when both sides are verified and the specification is clear.
Why the names matter
They matter because you do not send the same offer to each of them. A mill wants a furnace grade and a programme. A yard wants to move what is on the floor this week. A trader wants a spread and a shippable quantity. A processor wants feedstock that their line can upgrade. A broker wants two sides who do not already talk.
They also matter when you read a lot. If the seller is a yard, the metal is probably on site. If the seller is a trader, ask where it lies and whose analysis you will see. If the buyer is a mill or a remelter, the specification will be tighter than a trading enquiry that only says “copper”.
ScrapEurope asks companies to choose one of these types when they request access: yard, trader, mill, processor or broker. One company can do two jobs. The type is the main one. The lot still has to name the metal.