The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Convention and Exposition is the years largest event in the recycling industry.

Advanced Remarketing Services attended the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) annual convention and expo last month in Las Vegas.  It’s the largest annual gathering focused on recycling metals of varying types.  While it is not widely known outside of its primary industry, ISRI is a very strong trade association, balancing advocacy, education and industry trade quite capably.   We’ve attended the conference for several years and are consistently impressed by the caliber of conversation that happens there.

This year the show had a decidedly ‘upbeat’ mood.  The general optimism was fueled at least in part by the recent rise in scrap values.  Some of the recent rise is obviously attributed to the the rising prices due to tariff talk but the market overall was performing quite capably prior to the legislative discussion.  There doesn’t seem to be a universal perspective of what the tariff actions will bring for the next twelve months and net effect may be difficult to grade or quantify, but the general feeling outlook is good.

No matter what the tariff headlines deliver it’s pretty clear that the lion’s share of the optimism is really coming from unprecedented highs in global steel production.

Overall, we had some pretty great conversations with industry’s leaders about their needs and focus.  It’s an industry interested in obtaining raw material to fuel this demand. The raw material for steel production is obtained in the form of either iron ore or scrap steel.  The low value and end of life vehicles that ARS facilitates are a useful channel of raw material and we are working closely with our partner scrap buyers to feed this specific appetite.  

Advanced Remarketing Services provides a consistent supply of a diverse group of assets to steel and scrap metal buying processors.

Finding a consistent supply of the right volume and type of scrap is a challenge all of our partners face.  More and more, ARS is getting opportunities to solve these problems directly. Our objective remains to put the appetites of buyers – large and small – into a marketplace geared specifically for low value or end of life vehicles (ELV).  Scrap processors are purchasing our Rough Trade™ dealer volume, low value consumer units from You Call We Haul™ as well as our ELV Express™ salvage volume and our Car Donation Wizard™ charity units which present a diverse but consistent supply of these assets.  We had many exciting conversations and came away with a list of initiatives to focus on for the rest of 2018.

All in all a fantastic ISRI show.  Looking forward to 2019 in Los Angeles.