Highest Price

We’ll pay you top dollar for your scrap

You can count on the highest scrap metal prices with BL Duke as your recycling partner. We will tailor your pricing and payment terms to best fit your business.

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Maximizing Your Scrap Metal Return

We’ll pay you the highest price for your scrap metal. Our global reach allows us to extend to premium scrap metal markets, offering the most competitive prices. BL Duke stands out as the sole privately held recycling company in the Chicago area capable of moving scrap metal via barge, rail, and truck. This advantage significantly lowers transportation expenses, enabling us to pay you top dollar for your scrap metal.

Factors that Impact Scrap Metal Prices

Supply & Demand

Both domestic and global supply and demand dynamics significantly influence scrap metal markets, affecting prices, availability, and trade flows. Competition from international markets has an immediate effect on domestic scrap markets. Various factors, such as industrial output, construction and demolition operations, economics, and weather, influence scrap metal supply.

Scrap Metal Type & Volume

The pricing of scrap metal is influenced by its grade, total volume, and scrap metal conditions. Increased volumes of scrap metal result in higher scrap metal prices. Clean, sorted, and processed scrap metal generally commands higher prices compared to contaminated or mixed materials.

Transportation Expenses

Transportation expenses significantly affect the scrap metal industry by influencing overall costs, profitability, and competitive pricing. High transportation costs can reduce margins, especially for low-value scrap, and limit the geographic reach of scrap metal operations.

Pricing Solutions

We offer index, spot, and fixed price solutions – we’ll customize pricing and payment terms to best fit your business.

An index-based pricing structure is optimal for businesses that regularly produce a consistent quantity and type of scrap metal. This approach utilizes a public third-party commodity index and a predetermined price differential to determine scrap metal prices.

Benefits:

Ensures that the price of your scrap metal adjusts in tandem with market fluctuations, providing a dynamic pricing model that reflects current market value.

Using a public, third-party index to calculate scrap metal prices enhances transparency, allowing stakeholders to understand and trust the pricing process.

While the index price will vary, the agreed-upon price differential remains constant, ensuring a stable element in the pricing formula.

Spot pricing is a dynamic pricing mechanism that reflects real-time market conditions, determining the value of scrap metal based on the specific day and time of the quotation. This pricing model is suited for scrap metal types that are traded infrequently and may not be directly tied to a public third-party commodity index.

Benefits:

Spot prices are highly responsive to market changes, ensuring that the pricing of scrap metal accurately mirrors current market conditions without any delay caused by third-party reporting.

This pricing model is suited for scrap metal that is not directly tied to a public third-party commodity index or materials traded infrequently.

This approach allows sellers to capitalize on favorable market conditions on a transaction-by-transaction basis, providing flexibility in timing and pricing.

A fixed price model secures a scrap metal price for a specified duration of time, eliminating uncertainty and price volatility and transferring price fluctuations off your balance sheet. A fixed price agreement can range from a minimum of three months to a maximum of twelve months, with a requisite minimum volume of 20 gross tons per month.

Benefits:

Fixed pricing provides a stable price for sellers. This stability is invaluable for budgeting and financial planning, as it eliminates the uncertainty associated with fluctuating market prices

 

By locking in prices for a predetermined period, businesses can effectively hedge against market volatility. This approach serves as a form of risk management, protecting against adverse movements in metal prices that could erode margins or increase costs unexpectedly.

Our investment in technology, skilled personnel, and expertise enables us to offer fixed prices to our customers, utilizing futures contracts to manage our own exposure to price volatility.

See What Our Customers Are Saying

“Scrap prices are critical to our business. When we shopped around, we found that BL Duke consistently offers the best price.”

CFO, Service Center

“We like knowing what our scrap price is going to be for the next six months. In a market with so much volatility, we have peace of mind knowing we were able to mitigate some of that risk by getting a fixed price.”

President, Metal Stamping
“BL Duke has been our scrap recycler of choice for many years. We can always count on them for honest and transparent pricing. You can’t go wrong using them as your partner for all your scrap needs.”
Purchasing Manager, Manufacturer

Stay Updated with Our Latest News

  • April 2026 Scrap Market Forecast
  • April Market Forecast

Coming Soon – May’s Scrap Forecast

April 29th, 2026|

May 2026 Scrap Market Forecast: Prime grades strengthen, obsolete grades remain sideways, and improving mill demand supports stable pricing across Chicago and the Midwest.

  • March 2026 Scrap Market Forecast

The Divide – April’s Scrap Market

April 9th, 2026|

Chicago scrap prices: Prime grades steady, obsolete down $20. Aluminum strengthens, copper stabilizes, and stainless remains soft in April market update.

  • BL Duke Expands to Northwest Indiana

BL Duke Expands into Northwest Indiana

April 7th, 2026|

BL Duke expands into Northwest Indiana with a new Portage location, strengthening logistics, increasing capacity, and enhancing support for regional manufacturers and service centers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Several factors are used to determine scrap metal price, including the current market value, the type of scrap metal, its quality, quantity, and transportation expenses

The industry standard is net 30. However, payment terms are customized to accommodate the specific payment requirements of individual customers.

We offer the option of a fixed price for a period of up to six months, assisting our recycling partners in mitigating price volatility and ensuring consistent profit margins.

A gross ton (or long ton) imperial unit of weight is equivalent to 2240 pounds or 1016.046909 kilograms. A net ton (or short ton) US unit of weight equivalent to 2000 pounds or 907.184 kilograms.

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