What Metals Are Actually Worth Scrapping
If you are clearing a garage, a shed, a farm yard, or a workshop, the first question is always the same: what is the stuff actually worth? Some metals pay strongly by the kilogram. Others are volume games where the money only starts to add up once there is a serious weight on the truck. Here is the honest breakdown for 2026.
The top payers per kilogram
Copper is at the top and has been for as long as anyone in the trade can remember. Clean bright wire, copper tube, and old immersion cylinders pay the most of any common domestic scrap. A single 150-litre cylinder pulled out of an airing cupboard is worth more than most people expect. The cleaner and thicker the copper, the higher the grade and the higher the rate.
Brass is the reliable mid-tier. Old plumbing fittings, taps, door furniture, ammunition casings, and machine swarf all pay well. Brass is heavier than it looks, so a box of old tap bodies adds up faster than you think.
Lead is a volume-weighted heavy metal that pays steadily. Roofing flashing from chapel and church repairs, old plumbing pipe, and lead-acid battery cells all count. Lead is dense, so a small volume delivers a surprising weight on the scale.
Mid-tier payers
Aluminium is a volume game. Cleaner grades like extrusion and cast pay better per kilogram than sheet or irony aluminium mixed with steel fasteners. Cast aluminium, engine blocks and cylinder heads, tends to pay a touch more than extrusion because of its alloy content. Window frames, guttering, alloy wheels, and cladding all come in volume and are worth collecting together.
Stainless steel pays mid-tier, with higher grades like 316 paying more than 304. Catering kitchens, dairy tanks, brewery kit, and industrial railings are the usual sources.
The volume metals
Cast iron is low per kilogram but the weight builds fast. Old baths, radiators, field gates, engine blocks, and machinery bed castings all count. A farm yard of cast iron can still deliver a strong total because of the sheer weight.
Mild steel is the baseline ferrous rate. It pays, and in volume it pays properly. A few tonnes of scaffold tube, girders, or sheet off a demolition site is real money.
The specialist items
Cables are priced on copper yield after stripping. Domestic twin-and-earth, armoured cable, tri-rated industrial, and data cable all have different yields. You do not have to strip anything yourself; we assess at the yard.
Catalytic converters hold platinum, palladium, and rhodium inside the ceramic honeycomb. Prices on these three metals move daily, sometimes dramatically. A single catalytic converter from certain diesel or performance petrol engines can be worth a meaningful figure. OEM units pay far more than aftermarket.
Car and truck batteries pay on lead content. A standard car battery is worth having, a truck or forklift traction battery is worth a lot more.
Electric motors are weighted for their copper winding content. Whole motors are fine, we separate the copper at the yard.
Why farm scrap runs pay
Farm yards across Carmarthenshire often look like junk from the outside, a hedge-line tractor, rolled-up barbed wire, a stripped parlour, a stack of galvanised sheet. In reality these are some of the highest-value collection runs we do, because the weight is real and the mix usually includes copper fittings, aluminium cladding, and specialist parts alongside the volume steel. Any farm clear-out is worth a phone call.
How prices move
Every live scrap price moves with the London Metal Exchange and with global supply and demand. That is why no honest dealer publishes fixed per-kilogram figures; they would be out of date within days. When you ring, we quote the live figure of the day for the grade of material you have.
Thinking of selling something? Call 07974 608 218, describe what you have, and we give you the live figure and a collection slot on the same call.