BIR Valencia 2025 – Young Traders Committee: “A first plenary for future leaders and changemakers”
The first-ever Young Traders Committee Plenary Session was held at the BIR World Recycling Convention in Valencia on 27 May.
The occasion was described by Chairman Josh Brough, Director of JBMI Group Ltd (GBR) as providing a “call to action by young professionals to present, engage, learn and lead”. Mr Brough, who became Chairman in November 2024, emphasised the important part that younger recyclers could play at a “a critical moment in human history, a time defined not by abundance but by fragility and ever diminishing resources”. He emphasised the positivity around recycling and said: “Amidst the uncertainty there exists an industry which is invaluable and the trade body BIR to support them.”
Mr Brough said that it was his privilege to represent the next generation of custodians in this vital industry. “Within BIR, the Young Traders Group represents 18-to-35-year-olds in our industry, future leaders and changemakers. We need fresh perspectives. If you are a young professional in this industry or know a young trader aged 18-35, register for the YTG. Experiences are not just educational; they are career defining.”
The plenary session then featured, first, the role of the London Metal Exchange (LME) and, second, the opportunities that BIR involvement brings for young traders.
Alberto Xodo, Product Specialist (Steel & Nickel) at the LME told the audience about the origins of the Exchange which came about at a time of London coffee houses, more than 300 years ago. Then different businesses, for example, coffee, grain and metals, would happen in different coffee houses. The metals coffee house was to develop into the LME. Mr Xodo explained: “to import copper from Chile and tin from Malaysia, randomly the time for shipping from those countries was three months. “It was very dangerous to ship at that time, so if three ships of copper left Chile, maybe only one would arrive and all of a sudden, prices would spike.
“So, people looked for safety and they went to other merchants who were holding copper for example, and would say if the ship doesn’t arrive, could I use your copper instead in three months’ time? The merchant would say ok, fine, yes, I’m very happy to help you.
“I’ll charge you a shilling a day or whatever the contango was back in the day and that’s how futures trading was born. It was simply shifting risk from someone awaiting a shipment of metal to someone holding metal in their warehouse and being paid for the service they were providing to the other merchant.”
Mr Xodo said: “That’s essentially what the LME is, it’s a place to shift risk. LME became a company and will be 150 years old in 2027.” “Recently”, he noted, “the LME has done a big push in the recycling sector and we have launched a set of steel scrap contracts where the most liquid is steel scrap for Turkey, which trades at about one million tonnes a month, and we also have a used beverage can contract for the US market.”
The plenary session also heard from Ben László, Head of Information Technology Asset Disposal for Kuusakoski Recycling (FIN) on hedging in the scrap recycling industry. He explained that financial instruments, also known as derivatives contracts, can be considered as insurance contracts against market volatility. He noted that within the commodity business “the most dominant derivative contract is the futures contract, which is an agreement between two parties to buy or sell a certain asset at a predetermined price at a specific date in the future”.
The involvement of young traders within BIR was reflected with the enthusiasm shown by Lucy Thomas, Raw Materials (Scrap) Procurement Manager UK & Ireland for Norsk Hydro (GBR). Ms Thomas is based at the company’s Wrexham site in North Wales. She explained how she uses the LME in her role as a buyer and said that the LME aluminium price is a benchmark for scrap premiums and discounts. “With customers using it as well, it means that everyone is speaking the same language”.
She recalled how as a young trader she started her career at Hydro eight years ago in a scrap purchasing programme after gaining a degree in International Business Economics from Manchester University. “I quite often laugh now to think that when I was studying that degree, I never envisaged that I would have been a scrap buyer at the end of it.” She started by assisting her manager in purchasing and she has progressed to managing scrap purchases right through to furnace ready material.
Endorsing the role of the YTG at BIR, Ms Thomas added: “BIR is valuable, not just to have business contacts but also to have business friends.”