The scrap metal market

There are approximately 1000 registered scrap metal dealers and nearly 3000 bucket shop type dealers in the country. Most companies mark their material, which can be identified as the property of a specific organisation.

Scrap metal dealers have to take notice of this. The SAPS, supported by members of the NFTCC, carry out regular pro-active operations on certain identified scrap merchants.

Cape Town's plan

The City of Cape Town has set up a task team to respond to reports of copper cable and other metal theft. This team has appointed several investigators and a rapid response unit that is chaired by Councillor Pieter van Dalen. During a conference on Combating Non-Ferrous Metals Theft that was held in Gauteng during November by IQPC, Councillor Van Dalen said that the establishment of this task team came after the City had spent approximately R22 million to replace and repair damage caused by cable theft in one year alone.

The team's core focus is to arrest copper cable thieves and investigate scrap metal dealers. The investigators as well as the rapid response units that form part of the team can arrest perpetrators, and hand cases over to the SAPS for criminal prosecution. This task team has made significant progress since their establishment in February 2007 and during the past 12 months they have successfully apprehended 180 thieves and prevented many thefts. The areas where operations have taken place have shown a drastic reduction in cable theft.

During a summit that was held with business dealers and scrap metal merchants in Cape Town in June 2007, Mayor Helen Zille said that the multi-million rand theft of non-ferrous metal threatened to bring the city to its knees. She made an appeal to scrap yards to clean up their act and help to solve the problem instead of being part of the problem. Councillor Van Dalen said it was clear that they had to get involved with scrap yards in future planning. The task team finds it difficult to address the problem of scrap yards that buy municipal items as many municipal employees and contractors sell surplus material to scrap yards, instead of returning it to their workplace when their task has been completed. This creates a loophole for the scrap yard owner as the task team cannot distinguish between items that are obtained in the abovementioned method and those stolen from networks or storage areas. "Representatives of the scrap metal industry at the summit agreed to set up a dedicated task team in conjunction with BAC to pinpoint loopholes in the supply chain from the bucket shops to the large industry players. This however never happened and we in the City of Cape Town have now decided to rather do it on our own," said Councillor Van Dalen.

Councillor Van Dalen said that they have found that some thieves who steal cables are drug addicts working for syndicates, so that they can get money to buy drugs.