Europe’s investment in copper recycling and secondary processing must be supported by reliable access to the materials these facilities need to operate. This was the central message of ElvalHalcor’s contribution to Metals Day 2026 in Brussels, where the company brought the copper industry’s raw-material perspective to discussions on the Circular Economy Act.
Participating in the session on Sustainable Raw Materials in the Circular Economy Act, Ioannis Mytilineos, Senior Director, Copper Metal Purchases Department at ElvalHalcor, highlighted the practical challenges of sourcing secondary raw materials for European manufacturing. With EU copper scrap exports having risen significantly since 2022 and imports moving in the opposite direction, securing feedstock is becoming increasingly important as European fabricators, recyclers and secondary smelters invest in additional capacity.
For industry and investors, the connection is direct: new processing capacity needs sufficient raw-material availability to translate investment into production, greater circularity and reduced dependence on imported primary resources.
As Mr. Mytilineos noted: “Every day, our job is to find the copper units that keep our European plants running. Europe is investing in circularity and additional recycling capacity, but that capacity needs feedstock.”
The discussion identified two priorities for making Europe’s secondary raw-material market more effective. The first is a more integrated Single Market. Fragmented interpretations of end-of-waste rules and administrative requirements can make moving copper scrap between EU Member States slower, more complex and more expensive than exporting it outside the Union. ElvalHalcor highlighted the Circular Economy Act as an opportunity to address these barriers through harmonised criteria and simpler, increasingly digital and pre-consented shipment procedures between authorised and audited European facilities. More efficient circulation would help connect available materials with the facilities able to process them. The second priority is better visibility over material flows. Current customs classifications provide limited detail on the grade and copper content of exported scrap, making it difficult to distinguish the resources leaving Europe. More granular classifications and effective monitoring would support better-informed decisions on raw-material availability and progress towards the recycling objectives established under the Critical Raw Materials Act.
“We cannot manage what we cannot measure,” Mr. Mytilineos emphasiszed, underlining the importance of understanding the quantities and quality of traded materials.
The same approach applies to e-waste, where effective collection, separation and transparent reporting are essential to recovering copper from cables, motors, electronics and circuit boards.
Primary and secondary raw materials will both remain essential to meeting Europe’s copper requirements. The objective is to enable European recycling and manufacturing to compete effectively for secondary resources while retaining more of recycling’s economic and environmental value within European supply chains.
Because recycled copper requires only a fraction of the energy associated with primary production, improving its collection, circulation and processing supports both decarbonization and industrial competitiveness. ElvalHalcor’s contribution underscored the need to connect circular-economy policy with operational realities, creating the conditions for recycling investments to deliver lasting industrial value.