Two changes hit secondary aluminium at once, and only one of them is on your cost sheet

Most secondary aluminium smelters are treating this as a freight problem. Freight is the visible half. The specification change is the half that decides whether your existing supplier book is still usable, and it does not appear anywhere on a landed-cost calculation.

Taken separately, each is manageable. Taken together they invert the ranking of scrap origins for anyone supplying automotive castings.

The freight half

Route-level container repricing has changed delivered cost in a way that is not uniform across origins. Origins that were marginal on delivered cost have become competitive; origins that were competitive on a long-haul basis have lost their advantage.

Smelters who buy on a standing relationship rather than a delivered-cost comparison have absorbed this quietly and are now paying a premium they have not measured. The fix is mechanical: re-rank your origins on current delivered cost rather than last year's.