EGA's Al Taweelah Recycler Tightens UAE Aluminium Scrap Supply

EGA's 185,000 tonne per year recycling plant at Al Taweelah has been casting recycled billet since February 2026, and its ramp-up depends on scrap it must buy locally. With a temporary export ban reported to run from 10 June to 8 October 2026, domestic buyers now compete directly with exporters for UBCs, clean 6xxx extrusion offcuts and uncoated sheet.

What actually changed at Al Taweelah?

EGA charged the new melting furnace with scrap for the first time in late January 2026, per the company's 26 January media release, with construction completion expected by the end of Q1. Commercial production began in February 2026. Trade reporting in late June said full capacity was expected within six months, explicitly contingent on scrap availability. That last clause is the whole commercial story.

The plant is rated at 185,000 tonnes a year of recycled billet and T-bar, which EGA describes as the largest aluminium recycling facility in the UAE. Its sorting system can shred and segregate up to 150,000 tonnes a year using magnetic, mechanical and X-ray separation, according to EGA's operations page as retrieved in August 2026. If you still see 170,000 tonnes quoted anywhere, that was the November 2023 construction announcement, not today's rating.

The first year was not a clean run. EGA confirmed on 3 April 2026 that the Al Taweelah complex, smelter, casthouse, power plant, alumina refinery and recycling plant together, was evacuated and entered emergency shutdown following missile and drone attacks at KEZAD. Recycled cast metal production resumed in early May and the plant was formally inaugurated in late June 2026, according to trade press. Anyone telling you the project stalled is working from April information.

Recycled output carries the RevivAL brand, and EGA blends recycled metal with its CelestiAL solar aluminium at the Jebel Ali casthouse to produce CelestiAL-R. Group recycling capacity was reported above 400,000 tonnes a year in April 2026 after EGA agreed to acquire 80% of Italy's Eco Green, with roughly 200,000 tonnes more under development, including a second facility at Hannover. EGA's own framing of the old status quo is blunt: most aluminium scrap generated in the UAE was exported for processing overseas and, in its words, lost to the national economy.

Which grades does a smelter-grade buyer want?

Start with an honest gap. As of August 2026 we could not find a published EGA purchase specification in the public domain: no accepted grade list, no maximum contamination percentages, no moisture, oil or coating thresholds, no minimum lot size, no gate terms at Al Taweelah. Anyone quoting you precise limits without a copy of the buyer's spec sheet is guessing. Ask for it in writing before you bale a single load.

What we can describe is the metallurgy that drives the buying decision. A recycler feeding billet and T-bar casting is chasing predictable chemistry, because alloying elements cannot be removed once they are in the melt. That is why the same tonnage of aluminium can be worth two very different numbers depending only on how it was segregated at source.

Used beverage cans

UBCs are attractive because the alloy mix of body and lid is consistent across millions of units. The problems are physical, not chemical: residual liquid, food residue, lacquer and inks, and the moisture that arrives with any bale left in the open. Loose cans also carry a bulk density penalty on the truck, so density and bale integrity usually show up in the price conversation alongside grade.

6xxx extrusion offcuts

Clean 6063 offcuts from window, curtain wall and shopfitting fabricators are the premium domestic feed for a billet caster. Value collapses fast when the offcut arrives as an assembled section: steel screws and brackets, polyamide thermal breaks, rubber gaskets, brush seals, plastic end caps, silicone and heavy powder coating. Anodised material and painted profile are usually treated differently from mill-finish, so ask the buyer which of the two your stock counts as before you assume a price.

Clean sheet and the rest

Uncoated sheet and plate offcuts from HVAC, signage and light fabrication sit below clean extrusion but above mixed material, provided the cast components, wire, stainless fixings and coated panel are kept out. Cast aluminium, wheels and machining swarf are separate conversations. Swarf in particular carries cutting oil and coolant, and a wet, oily load is a different product from a dry one no matter what the alloy is.

What pushes a load down a grade?

The mechanism is simple and unforgiving. A mixed load prices at the lowest grade present, not at a weighted average, because the buyer has to melt the whole charge together. One UAE dealer page, indicative only and undated beyond roughly July 2026, states that clean extrusion pays 40% to 60% more than mixed painted aluminium and that mixing extrusion with cast or painted sheet drops the entire lot to the lowest rate. We have not verified that spread independently, but every trader we deal with describes the same behaviour.

• Ferrous attachments. Screws, hinges, rivets and steel brackets left in profile. Magnetic separation catches them, and the deduction follows.
• Organics and plastics. Thermal breaks, gaskets, end caps, labels and film. X-ray and mechanical sorting will find them, which means the buyer prices what the line sees, not what your delivery note says.
• Coatings. Powder coat, paint and anodising change the melt loss on the charge. Coated and mill-finish material should never share a bale.
• Moisture and free liquid. A safety issue at the furnace before it is a pricing issue. Covered storage is cheap insurance.
• Alloy mixing. Cast in with extrusion, or 5xxx sheet in with 6xxx, is the most expensive mistake because it is invisible on a visual inspection and shows up on the spectrometer.

What are UAE aluminium scrap prices in August 2026?

There is no published UAE aluminium scrap index. The figures below are dealer marketing indications with dates attached, useful for direction and completely unsuitable as a contract basis. Note that two dealer sources disagree on clean 6063 by up to AED 1.50 per kg, which is around AED 1,500 per tonne. That gap is the point: grade is settled bilaterally, load by load.

For a hedgeable reference, the LME Aluminium Alloy three month closing price showed USD 3,200.00 per tonne and the LME Aluminium UBC Scrap US (Argus) month two contract showed USD 2,562.87 per tonne on a day-delayed snapshot we retrieved on 17 August 2026. The UBC contract is a US-basis instrument, not a UAE price, but it is the cleanest public proxy for the discount a UBC bale carries against alloy ingot. Ignore any UAE page still quoting USD 700 to 800 per tonne; at least one such page dates from November 2022.

Can you still ship mixed aluminium out of Jebel Ali?

Not freely, and the detail matters. Ministerial Decision No. 105 of 2026 from the Ministry of Foreign Trade introduced a four month temporary export ban covering certain industrial wastes and scrap metals, including aluminium scrap under several HS 7602 codes, effective seven working days after issuance. Reporting places the window at 10 June to 8 October 2026, renewable. Exemptions can be requested through the Ministry's trade information platform for shipments under international contracts concluded before the notice and for shipments deemed in the public interest, and Dubai Customs has indicated violations are penalised under the Unified Customs Law.

Two clarifications, because both errors are circulating. First, this is not the old ban. The UAE enforced a full aluminium scrap export ban across 2020 to 2023, which ended and was replaced by an export duty of AED 100 per tonne, around USD 27, as reported by Argus at the end of December 2025. Second, coverage is inconsistent on whether the June 2026 measure is federal or effectively Dubai-scoped, and analysts have flagged the risk of volumes rerouting through Sharjah, Abu Dhabi or Fujairah. Verify scope with your customs broker before you book anything, and read the parallel effect on ferrous in our note on UAE HMS 80:20 pricing as exports shut.

How do you re-plan a yard that used to export?

1. Get the buyer's written specification, including accepted grades, contamination tolerances, moisture policy, minimum lot and delivery point. Do not price off assumptions.
2. Segregate at the point of generation. Separate bins for mill-finish extrusion, coated profile, uncoated sheet, cast and swarf pay for themselves within weeks at current spreads.
3. De-attach before baling. Strip screws, thermal breaks, gaskets and end caps in the fabrication shop, where labour is already on site.
4. Store under cover. Moisture and free liquid are the fastest route from a premium bale to a discounted one.
5. Sample and record. Keep a photo set and, for regular volumes, a spectrometer reading per lot so a dispute has evidence behind it.
6. Run two quotes minimum, one domestic and one broker, and compare landed value after the AED 100 per tonne duty, freight and any exemption paperwork.
7. Fix the invoicing model before the truck moves, because the VAT treatment changed in January 2026.

If you are rebuilding the commercial side rather than the operational one, the metals listings on our marketplace show which grades UAE buyers are actively bidding on this quarter, and our KYC checks through UAE PASS, escrow via MyFatoorah and 48 hour inspection window exist precisely because grade disputes on aluminium are settled after the load lands.

What paperwork does a domestic sale need?

Tax first. Cabinet Decision No. 153 of 2025 applied the VAT reverse charge mechanism to trading of metal scrap between UAE-registered persons with effect from 14 January 2026, issued under Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017. The buyer accounts for the VAT, not the seller, and both parties must be VAT-registered for the mechanism to apply. The Ministry of Finance said the measure targets fraudulent practices in metal scrap trading, so invoices, escrow release conditions and credit notes all need to reflect it correctly.

On the waste side, Federal Law No. 12 of 2018 on Integrated Waste Management, with Executive Regulations detailed by MOCCAE in July 2021, puts responsibility for proper handling and the financial cost on the waste generator, while the competent local authority in each emirate administers the rules. In Abu Dhabi that means Tadweer, established in 2008, and its Services Guide of July 2025, which routes work through the Bolisaty contracting platform for authorised service providers and the Tadweer Group Wallet for facility gate access. In Dubai, transfer documentation has moved online, which we covered in our piece on digital waste transfer notes.

One practical consequence of the sorting technology at Al Taweelah deserves a final line. When a buyer runs magnetic, mechanical and X-ray segregation on up to 150,000 tonnes a year, the yard that mixes grades is no longer negotiating with an inspector's eye. It is negotiating with a sorting line that produces a number. Segregation discipline at source is now the pricing lever, and you can track how that plays out across other streams in our market insights archive.

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