Aluminium does not settle at a single rate — one name covers several trade grades that differ in alloy composition, cleanliness and metal yield per tonne. Clean window profile and oily lathe turnings are two different raw materials for a mill, so they are priced separately in scrap buying too. Below is a guide to the grades you will meet most often.
Why aluminium is settled by grade
Aluminium almost never occurs in scrap as a pure element — it comes as alloys with silicon, magnesium, copper or zinc, chosen for a specific application. A mill pays for predictable composition and high yield, which is why homogeneous material is worth more than a mixture of the same weight. It is the same logic we describe for copper grades.
Clean extrusion
Extrusion means extruded profile: window and door frames, façades, structural elements. A homogeneous alloy, known composition, high yield — the highest priced grade in this family. The condition is a clean profile, free of fittings, screws, hinges, gaskets and thermal breaks.
Profile with the full hardware still on it does not stop being tradeable material, but it drops into a lower class. If joinery is dismantled at your site anyway, splitting the waste into two streams costs little and genuinely changes the valuation. We write more about this stream on the page for aluminium joinery manufacturers.
Castings
Cast aluminium covers engine housings, gearbox casings, machine parts and pressure-cast components. The alloy differs from profile — usually with a higher silicon content — and more often contains embedded steel elements, bushings or seal residue. We settle it separately from extrusion.
Wheels and radiators
Alloy wheels are castings of a fairly homogeneous composition, but with additions: the tyre, balancing weights, sometimes a steel ring. Wheels are taken in only without tyres — a tyre is a separate waste stream — and weights or steel parts left in the wheel move it into the contaminated grade.
Radiators are mixed material by definition: aluminium together with copper, brass or plastic. They are separated by type (aluminium-copper, all-aluminium) and priced by actual composition rather than gross weight.
Turnings and swarf from machining
Turnings from lathes and mills are a constant stream in every metalworking plant. Three things drive their valuation: oil content, moisture and contamination with foreign metal. Drained or centrifuged turnings settle noticeably better than wet ones collected together with coolant. Mixing aluminium and steel turnings on one heap lowers the value of both streams.
Litho sheet
Litho is thin aluminium sheet from printing plates — homogeneous, clean, easy to settle, though light. It is the characteristic waste of a printing house, usually collected in bundles or on pallets.
What downgrades a batch
Four things most often push a batch into a lower grade:
- Steel and iron — screws, hinges, embedded bushings, steel reinforcements.
- Plastics and rubber — gaskets, thermal breaks, insulation, coatings.
- Moisture and oil — especially in turnings and fines.
- Mixing grades — extrusion thrown in with castings will settle as the weaker material, not as an average of the two.
Not sure which class your material falls into? That is normal — grading is our job. We assess the grade at the branch visually and by the characteristics of the material, and where the alloy is not obvious we confirm the composition with a handheld spectrometer.
Do you have a regular stream of aluminium waste from production? Send photos and an approximate tonnage — we will price your aluminium by its actual grade rather than an averaged rate.