Selling scrap metal in NSW and Victoria

Most people ring a scrap yard for one of two reasons. A shed is being cleared and there is a trailer load of star pickets, roofing iron and an old hot water system sitting on the lawn. Or a job has wrapped up and there is thirty kilos of copper offcuts that somebody swore were worth real money. Either way the first two questions are the same, and the phone call rarely answers either of them straight: what is this worth, and can it be paid in cash.

The second question has a flat answer and has had one for years. No. Not in New South Wales, not in Victoria, not for a ute load and not for a truck load. That is not the yard being difficult. It is two Acts of Parliament, and on this stretch of the border they are not the same Act.

The cash ban is law, not yard policy

In New South Wales the rule is section 12 of the Scrap Metal Industry Act 2016 No 42. A scrap metal dealer must not, in buying any scrap metal, pay for it with cash, by cheque payable to cash, or in kind with goods or services. The maximum penalty is 100 penalty units. NSW Police state that 500 penalty units is a $55,000 fine, which puts a New South Wales penalty unit at $110 and section 12 at about $11,000. The Act commenced by proclamation on 1 March 2017. Section 12A goes further again and bans a dealer from even advertising that it will pay cash, at 20 penalty units.

In Victoria the equivalent is section 19A of the Second-Hand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act 1989, inserted by Act No 45 of 2017 and in force since 30 May 2018. The wording is wider. A second-hand dealer who buys or sells scrap metal must not pay for or receive payment for scrap metal in cash. Payment must be by a cheque that is not transferable or payable to cash, by an electronic transfer of funds that does not involve e-currency, or by another prescribed form. The penalty is 200 penalty units. At the Victorian penalty unit of $209.10, which applies from 1 July 2026, that is $41,820. Consumer Affairs Victoria also publishes an infringement of 12 penalty units for the same conduct, which at the same rate is $2,509.20. Both dollar figures are the penalty unit multiplied out rather than amounts either regulator prints, and both change on 1 July each year when the unit is reset.

That last difference is not academic in Albury Wodonga. A seller who crosses the Lincoln Causeway has changed regulator, Act, registration scheme and penalty scale in about four minutes of driving.

Fees and penalty units are current as at August 2026 and both states index them, so the dollar figures move even when the law does not.

What the yard has to write down before it can buy

New South Wales is specific to the point of bluntness. Section 16 requires a record of the date, the seller's name, residential address and date of birth as shown on photo identification, a description of the metal and its quantity or weight, the unique identifier if the metal is a motor vehicle, and the method of payment including BSB and account number. The record must be kept for three years, at the premises where the business is carried on, or in the vehicle if the yard operates from one.

The acceptable photo documents are a short list: an Australian driver licence, a foreign driver licence written in English or with an English translation showing date of birth, address and photograph, a Photo Card, or a proof of age card issued by a public authority. Expired or cancelled documents do not count. There is no second option. A Medicare card and a rates notice will not get anyone paid in a New South Wales yard.

Victoria is looser on the document and firmer on the consequence. Section 19 accepts one document bearing a photograph, being a passport, driver licence, document issued by a statutory authority or another prescribed category, or two documents from two different prescribed categories, which can include a birth certificate, citizenship certificate or a Commonwealth health or pensioner card. Then section 19(2) does something New South Wales does not spell out the same way: if the seller cannot produce the evidence on request, the dealer must refuse to accept the goods, at 20 penalty units. Producing false identity evidence is 50 penalty units, and that one lands on the seller.

Both states require the yard to tell police about anything that smells wrong. In New South Wales section 13 makes it an offence, at 50 penalty units, for a dealer not to inform a police officer without unreasonable delay of a suspicion that metal in their possession or sold to them may have been stolen. In Victoria section 22 requires the dealer to check goods against any stolen goods notice served by police and to inform police immediately of a suspicion.

New South Wales adds a mechanism worth knowing about. Under section 15, a police officer can serve a written order stopping a dealer altering or disposing of suspect metal for 14 days, and can reissue it once for another 14 days. Non-compliance is 500 penalty units. NSW Police also enter yards without a warrant at any reasonable time, copy and remove documents, take photographs and require answers to questions, and an officer of or above the rank of Inspector can shut a premises for 72 hours. Convictions and penalty notices go on a published contraventions register.

Ferrous, non-ferrous, and why the gap is so wide

Every yard sorts into two families before anything else happens. Ferrous metal contains iron and a magnet sticks to it: steel, cast iron, roofing sheet, star pickets, car bodies, brake rotors. Non-ferrous does not hold a magnet: copper, brass, aluminium, lead, stainless steel and the electrical mix.

The price gap between the two is not a small premium. It is usually an order of magnitude, and it comes from where each one ends up. Ferrous scrap is bulk feedstock. Its value is set against export and mill benchmarks, then everything between the yard and the mill gets subtracted: rail or road freight, handling, shearing, and an allowance for whatever is not steel. Copper and aluminium are traded on international exchanges in United States dollars, are worth remelting almost regardless of where they start, and survive a long freight leg without the freight eating the whole margin.

That is why a magnet in the pocket is the single most useful tool a seller can own, and why the same trailer can be worth wildly different amounts depending on whether the copper came out first.

Within non-ferrous there are grades again. Bright bare copper wire is the top of the tree. Insulated cable is discounted for the plastic that has to be stripped and disposed of. Brass sits below copper. Aluminium separates into extrusion, cast and sheet. Stainless is graded by whether it is 304 or 316. A yard that quotes one aluminium price for everything is averaging down, which is fine for a small load and expensive for a big one.

Why Monday's price is not Friday's price

Nobody at a Wagga Wagga or Wodonga yard is making the price up, and nobody there is setting it either. A regional yard's buy price is a back-calculation. It starts with what a mill, smelter or exporter has committed to pay this week, subtracts freight to that destination, subtracts handling and processing, subtracts an allowance for contamination that will be found later, and subtracts a margin. Change any one of those and the number at the gate changes.

Three of them move constantly. Exchange-traded non-ferrous benchmarks move daily and are quoted in United States dollars, so the Australian dollar exchange rate moves the local price even on a day when the metal itself did not budge. Freight rates move with fuel and with truck availability. And the mill or exporter's own buying window opens and closes, which is why a yard will sometimes stop taking a grade entirely rather than quote a bad price on it.

This is also why distance shows up in the price here. Albury, Wodonga, Wagga Wagga, Shepparton and Wangaratta are all a long way from a port or a mill. Freight is a bigger slice of the calculation in the Riverina and the Ovens and Goulburn valleys than it is in an outer suburb of Melbourne, and it hits low value, high bulk ferrous hardest. A phone quote given on a Monday is a genuine estimate of Monday's arithmetic and nothing more. Ask when it was last updated rather than treating it as a commitment.

No price list appears in this guide for that reason. Any published figure would be wrong within days, and a number that is wrong is worse than no number at all. Ring two or three yards on the day, and ask them to quote per grade rather than per load. Directory listings for scrap metal recyclers across the border towns are a reasonable place to start that round of calls.

The weighbridge and what tare weight means

A weighbridge used to buy or sell goods is a trade measuring instrument and sits under federal law, not state law. The National Measurement Institute administers Australia's trade measurement system under the National Measurement Act 1960 and the National Trade Measurement Regulations 2009, and it names scrap metal explicitly as one of the goods weighbridges are used for, generally for loads over three tonnes.

The obligations sit with the yard, not the seller. A weighbridge owner must ensure the NMI has approved that type of weighbridge, that a servicing licensee has verified it, that it is verified again after any repair or adjustment, that operators are trained, and that it is kept clean and in working order. Approaches to the platform have to comply with regulation 3.4. Anyone making a weighbridge available for public weighings needs a public weighbridge licence.

The practical part is tare. The vehicle is weighed loaded, which is the gross weight, then weighed again empty, which is the tare weight. The difference is the net weight, and that is what gets paid for. Two things follow from that. Everything that is on the vehicle for the first weigh and off it for the second is being sold, including the tie-down chains if they came off with the load. And anything left on the tray after unloading, including a wet tarp, is weight the seller does not get paid for. Yards that weigh the whole vehicle in one pass are using the direct method, which the NMI treats as the more accurate of the two. If a vehicle is too long for the platform and gets weighed front and rear separately, that is the end-and-end method, and the weighbridge has to be specifically approved by the NMI to use it.

The other tare that costs money is the one inside the load. If a bin of steel goes across with concrete still attached to it, that concrete is weighed at the ferrous rate and then deducted as contamination, and the deduction is rarely generous.

Preparation is mostly separation

Almost all of the value a seller can add before arriving is separation, not cleaning. Metal sorted into like grades is bought at grade price. Metal in a mixed heap is bought at, or near, the lowest price present in the heap, because the yard now has to do the sorting and prices the risk of what it has not seen yet.

The list that actually moves the number is short. Get copper and brass out of appliances and off the trailer separately. Keep aluminium away from steel. Strip cable if the volume justifies the hours, and do not bother if it does not. Remove concrete, timber, soil, rubber and plastic where it comes away easily. Keep stainless separate from galvanised sheet, because they look similar and are not worth the same. Drain oil and fuel from anything that held them.

Contamination is judged on arrival and it is judged conservatively. A single sealed container of unknown liquid in a load of steel can cost more in deduction than the steel around it earned.

Hot water systems, batteries and gas bottles

These three come up constantly and all three have consequences beyond the price.

Hot water systems. An electric storage unit is a steel outer jacket around an inner cylinder, and the inner cylinder is where any real value sits. The relevant caution is age. Victoria's asbestos A to Z of asbestos-containing materials lists electric hot water services with the note that they are normally not asbestos but that some millboard could be present, and separately lists boiler insulation, boiler gaskets and pipe insulation including moulded sections, rope braid and sheet. The total Australian ban on manufacture, supply, use, reuse, import, transport, storage and sale of asbestos came into force on 31 December 2003, so anything installed well before then deserves a look rather than an angle grinder. Yards will generally take a whole unit. Cutting one open in a driveway is the part worth not doing.

Car batteries. Lead acid batteries are hazardous, not just heavy. In Victoria used lead acid batteries are normally reportable priority waste under Schedule 5 of the Environment Protection Regulations 2021, with a designation that reclassifies them by volume: transporting less than 1,000 litres of combined electrolyte or under four tonnes drops them to priority waste, storing under five cubic metres makes them industrial waste, and storage between five cubic metres and 40 tonnes needs an A13c registration. The duties EPA Victoria sets out are a good description of what safe handling looks like anywhere: store on an impermeable surface under cover, separate tiers with non-conductive material, prevent electrolyte escaping, protect against short circuits, isolate leaking batteries, and keep records for two years. The named hazards are acid and lead. Batteries should go to a yard that takes them, upright, unstacked and not in the footwell.

Gas bottles and LPG tanks. This is the one with a body count behind it. SafeWork NSW guidance on end-of-life LPG vehicles notes that LPG vaporises faster than petrol, sits in vehicle fuel systems at up to 10 bar gauge, forms an explosive mixture at concentrations between about 2 and 10 per cent in air, and can cause cold burns as it flashes off. The guidance requires businesses to identify LPG vehicles before accepting them, check for leaks, disconnect and remove the vehicle battery before working on the fuel system, quarantine leaking vehicles in the open air away from ignition sources, and remove LPG tanks before scrapping, with a licensed gas fitter doing the removal and emptying.

The same logic applies to a barbecue bottle. A cylinder that has not been purged and rendered safe is a pressure vessel with a flammable residue in it, and cutting into one is the classic way people are killed at scrap yards. Most yards will only take a cylinder with the valve removed or with proof it has been degassed. Ring first. Do not leave one at a gate.

A car is a different transaction again

Once a motor vehicle is involved, the vehicle rules stack on top of the scrap metal rules, and this is where the two states diverge most.

In New South Wales section 14 of the Scrap Metal Industry Act makes it an offence, at 500 penalty units, for a dealer to buy scrap metal consisting of a motor vehicle where the unique identifier has been removed, obliterated, defaced or altered, or to sell or dispose of such a vehicle, unless a police officer has authorised it in writing. NSW Police are explicit that only a police officer can issue that authority for disposal. Separately, a business that dismantles vehicles or trades in prescribed parts needs a motor vehicle recycler licence under the Motor Dealers and Repairers Act 2013. Operating without one attracts a $5,500 penalty notice or prosecution to a maximum of $110,000. Licensed recyclers keep a Form 3 and Form 3A register, make entries within one business day, and hold the registers for six years after the last entry. New licence fees from 1 July 2026 run from $665 for one year online to $2,331 for five.

Victoria splits it differently, and the split surprises people. Consumer Affairs Victoria's guidance is that a wrecker dealing in incomplete vehicles and parts may not need a motor car trader licence, but must be registered as a second-hand dealer. The motor car trader licence is triggered by buying, selling or exchanging complete cars with the public, generally four or more in a year, and specifically by dealing in written-off or damaged vehicles capable of being repaired or restored. The combined application fee and first annual licence fee for 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027 is $2,965.20. Section 19B then mirrors the New South Wales vehicle identifier rule at 200 penalty units, and extends it to merely possessing such a vehicle.

Both states publish a register. NSW Police publish a public register of registered scrap metal businesses, and Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes registers for both second-hand dealers and licensed motor car traders. Checking a yard against the right register takes a minute and is the single best filter available. There is more on the vehicle side in the guide to selling a car to a wrecker, and listings for wreckers sit alongside the scrap yards.

Before the trailer gets loaded

Take photo identification that is current, and in New South Wales make sure it is a driver licence, Photo Card or proof of age card, because nothing else on the list will do. Have bank details ready, because the money is going into an account whichever side of the river the yard is on. Ring on the morning of the trip and ask for prices per grade, not per load. Pull the copper and aluminium out first. Take the gas bottles out of the load and ask about them separately. Leave the battery upright and on its own. And if the hot water system predates 2003, mention its age at the gate rather than after it is on the ground.

Yards across Albury, Wodonga and Wagga Wagga operate under different statutes but they are all asking the same questions at the gate, and they are asking because the law requires it.

Sources

Checked on 2026-08-25. Government fees and rules are indexed and revised, so open the source before you rely on a figure.

• police.nsw.gov.au
• legislation.nsw.gov.au
• consumer.vic.gov.au
• legislation.vic.gov.au
• content.legislation.vic.gov.au
• dtf.vic.gov.au
• nsw.gov.au
• industry.gov.au
• epa.vic.gov.au
• safework.nsw.gov.au
• asbestos.vic.gov.au