Scrap Business Generates Over N50bn Annually

Forget white collar job, dealing on scrapped aluminum, iron, copper wires, plastics and other used or abandoned materials considered worthless by many is turning in over N50 billion annually to stakeholders. Every week, hundreds of truckloads of such scraps find their way to companies’ recycle plants located in Lagos and other parts of the country where they are turned into iron or aluminum billets, plastics materials for manufacturing metal products, aluminum profiles, plastic products or other finished products.

Daily Sun investigations reveal that not less than one million Lagosians, mostly youths, are eking out a living converting trash to cash in the thriving Lagos market of scraps that dot the length and breadth of Lagos. Our investigation further revealed that the patrons of scrap dealers are big companies like African Foundries Limited which hopes to commence export of about 500, 000 metric tons of iron ore to African countries; Delta Steel Rolling Company, Alaja, which has installed capacity to roll out 1.5 million metric tons, and several others.

With the near collapse of the country’s iron ore mining companies like Itakpe Iron Ore Mining Company, most steel rolling companies have largely relied on recycling scrapped iron which has increasingly turned to a significant source of raw materials. Scrapped plastic materials present cheaper raw material option to plastic manufacturing companies which recycle the scraps for manufacturing new ones. In the Idi-Araba, Lagos axis of the scrap business, over 5,000 youths are gainfully employed in the business just as hundreds of dealers who buy from them are, while the Mile 2-Badagry Road area employs over 2, 000.