Hot metal – when scrap becomes cash
As the grabber lifts up a bus chassis and scrunches it into something a little smaller, before dropping it on to the vast pile of scrap metal glinting in the frost of a January day in Kent, inside the office at the Scrapco yard you see what the fuss is all about.
On the computer screen the latest information from the police in this area of Kent, alerting every reputable scrap dealer in the area to the latest theft of metals in this immediate part of southern England.
A theft of copper here, lead there, some wiring elsewhere – on it goes. Staggeringly, one of the overnight thefts is from the Olympic Park in east London – not exactly the most undefended of sites.
But this is hard-pressed Britain in the hardest-pressed month perhaps, and every night gangs are out there thieving metal.
“It’s organised crime – nothing less than that, ” says Ricky Hunn, who runs this yard in the flatlands of the Thames Estuary to the east of London. “We are not talking about the odd thief here and there – that’s always happened. But the people going into the BT copper wire and the railway wire for the same metal – copper – are nothing short of organised criminals.”
Next to his computer, a couple of recently delivered photocopies set out other targets of Britain’s wave of metal crime. One details a war memorial of all things, the metal plaque stripped for illicit sale to one of the myriad of other scrap dealers out there not likely to ask too many questions.
Aside form being as aghast as anybody else that people would stoop to nicking plaques from war memorials, Mr Hunn is dubious that the latest government initiative will make much difference to anything at all.
“We’ve always asked for proper ID from people who aren’t our regular customers. If you’ve people coming in here daily of course there’s no point to asking who they are, since we know. But if someone turns up wanting to sell, say, a few kilos of this or that, then we have always asked for both photo ID and a copy of a utility bill so we know who they are and where they are.”
Is this just because he’s particularly scrupulous then?
“No, it’s self-interest, ” he says, “I mean, you just don’t want the hassle do you? What’s the point of doing something for a few quid where you could end up with courts and solicitors and who knows what? It’s just not worth it.”
The problem, as he readily admits, is that there are plenty of smaller dealers out there who would be interested. As he sees it, the more you legislate the more you simply push the illicit trade further underground and there will always be an illicit end of this market as for all markets.
And Ricky Hunn is very much a victim of it all himself. Recently he lost his brother. Not long ago he visited his grave only to find that, yes, the metal plaque at his graveside had been stolen.