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There's a genuine split happening across the UK scrap metal industry right now, and it's worth understanding both sides before picking one.
Some yards have never published their prices and never will. Others post full price sheets on their website or social media and say it's winning them customers. Neither side is wrong — they're just optimising for different things.
The case for publishing prices
It attracts sellers. A published price list means someone searching "scrap copper prices near me" can land on your page already knowing roughly what to expect. That's a real advantage in a market where sellers increasingly research before they turn up.
It removes friction. Instead of a seller calling round three or four yards to compare, they can check online and come straight to whoever looks competitive that day. Fewer calls, fewer wasted trips.
It signals transparency. In an industry that's sometimes been criticised for opaque or inconsistent pricing, being upfront can build trust with sellers who've been burned before.
The case against publishing prices
Prices go stale fast. Scrap prices move with the London Metal Exchange (LME). A price sheet published on Monday is wrong by Wednesday — and sellers who show up quoting last week's number rarely take the correction well.
It hands competitors a free read on your margins. Publishing your full price list doesn't just inform sellers. It tells every buyer within driving distance exactly what you're paying, making it trivial for them to undercut you by a few pence a kilo.
It can start arguments at the weighbridge. "But your website said X" is one of the most common friction points yards report once they've gone public with pricing — especially on volatile materials like copper.
So who's actually right?
Probably neither camp, in isolation. Sellers don't need a yard's entire pricing history or margin structure — they need one thing: a fair, current idea of what their material is worth, without having to ring round to find out. Buyers don't need to hide from sellers either — they need to stop fielding endless price-check calls for material that was never going to be sold to them anyway.
Those two needs aren't actually in conflict. The industry has just been treating "publish everything publicly" and "publish nothing at all" as the only two options, when the real problem is a lack of a middle ground: pricing that's current, specific to the seller's material, and doesn't hand a competitor your entire rate card in the process.
What this means for sellers right now
Until that middle ground becomes standard, the safest approach as a seller is still to get more than one quote before committing to a load, particularly on higher-value material like copper, brass, or cable. A single yard's number — published or not — is only ever one data point, and prices shift often enough that comparing is rarely wasted effort.
Selling through a platform where multiple verified buyers bid on your listing sidesteps the whole debate: you get a current, competitive price without either side needing to publish anything to the wider internet.
List your scrap metal on ScrapBays and see what buyers are actually offering today, not last week. Sell on ScrapBays →
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