Aluminium Cans (UBC)
UBC, used beverage cans, is a real, tradeable scrap category with its own live price. It just isn't the right tool for a household bag of empties, and being upfront about that from the start is more useful than pretending otherwise. Here's who this category is actually for, and how to sell into it properly.
UBC stands for Used Beverage Cans, the standard industry term for collected, empty aluminium drink cans. On its own, a single can is worth almost nothing, the value comes from volume and from baling, compressing loose cans into dense, stackable blocks that are actually economical to freight and process. A genuine UBC seller is dealing in real bulk, not a bag from the back of the garage, and understanding that distinction upfront saves everyone time.
ScrapTrade's live-priced Aluminium Cans (UBC) category is specifically baled used beverage cans. See our full aluminium scrap guide for how this compares to extrusion and sheet, the other two aluminium grades.
Check today's UBC priceSouth Australia has run a container deposit scheme since 1977, the oldest in the country, and every other state and territory has since followed, most recently Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Every scheme pays 10 cents per eligible container. For a normal household or small collection quantity, that refund beats bulk scrap pricing by a wide margin, there's genuinely no reason to bother baling a few bags of cans for UBC scrap when the container refund point pays more per can.
UBC selling makes real sense at a different scale entirely: collection point operators, charities running a can drive, hospitality venues generating high volume, or anyone consolidating cans well beyond what one household or a casual weekend collection round could ever realistically produce. If that's genuinely your situation, this is a real, tradeable category worth checking rather than assuming cans aren't worth listing.
Keep the load genuinely aluminium, steel drink cans look similar at a glance but are a completely different metal, and even a modest amount mixed in reduces the quality of the whole bale. A magnet is the simplest test, aluminium cans won't stick, steel ones will, worth running through a large mixed collection before baling if you're not confident it's already sorted.
Crushing before baling isn't essential but does make handling and transport easier at real volume. A commercial can baler compresses loose or crushed cans into dense blocks, worth investigating once you're operating at a scale where baling equipment pays for itself, collection points and high-volume venues are the typical operators who reach that point. Left uncrushed and unbaled, cans are still worth listing, they just won't suit every buyer the way a properly baled load does.
UBC volume tracks population and consumption more than any single industry, which makes it common everywhere, but two markets are worth noting specifically. Adelaide is where Australia's container deposit system began, and South Australia's near-50-year head start means the collection and bulk-handling infrastructure around cans is genuinely more mature there than almost anywhere else in the country. Sydney simply has the scale, the country's largest population and consumption base translates directly into the largest volume of cans generated, whatever share of that ends up as bulk UBC rather than container refunds.
Neither city is a requirement. Genuine bulk UBC volume comes from collection operations and high-throughput venues anywhere in Australia, and ScrapTrade connects buyers and sellers nationally regardless of where a listing is posted from.
Can-grade aluminium recycles into new cans with genuinely low energy use compared to producing aluminium from raw ore, it's one of the more efficient closed-loop recycling streams in everyday use. That efficiency is exactly why a properly baled, genuine bulk UBC load has real, consistent commercial value, buyers processing at scale can turn it back into new metal quickly and cheaply, which is reflected directly in what they're willing to pay for a well-prepared load.
Because UBC is priced per kilogram at a lower rate than most other metals, small differences in the offer matter more to your total return, which makes checking around genuinely worthwhile rather than optional. On ScrapTrade, you check a live reference price first, then list your baled load at a fixed price, run it as a live auction so verified buyers compete for it, or negotiate directly, negotiation is on by default on every listing. Every listing is GPS-video verified before it goes live, and payment sits in escrow from the moment a deal is confirmed until pickup or delivery is done, so neither side is exposed first. The full case for why that beats a single yard quote is on Why Choose ScrapTrade and Trust & Safety.
Used Beverage Cans, the industry term for exactly what it sounds like, empty aluminium drink cans collected for recycling. It's the standard term buyers and recyclers use, worth knowing if you're listing or searching for this material specifically.
Loose cans are mostly air, they take up a huge amount of transport space for very little actual weight of aluminium. Baling compresses them into dense, stackable blocks that are genuinely economical to freight, which is why bulk buyers price baled cans and won't typically take loose ones at real volume.
For most people, the 10-cent-per-container refund beats bulk scrap pricing, so it's usually the better option for a normal collection volume. UBC selling makes more sense once you're operating at a genuinely different scale, a collection point, a charity drive, or a business consolidating volume well beyond typical household or small collection quantities.
Not really for pricing, both crush down into a bale fine. What matters more is that the load is genuinely aluminium cans, not mixed with steel cans, other metal containers, or heavy contamination, since that affects the quality of the bale a buyer receives.
Check a live reference price before you commit to a buyer's first offer. Running a genuine bulk lot as a live auction lets multiple verified buyers compete for it, which matters more for UBC than for most materials since per-kilogram value is lower and buyer competition makes a real difference to the total.
Aim for as close to zero as practical. Steel contamination in a bale of aluminium cans reduces its quality and can affect what a buyer is willing to pay for the whole load, not just the contaminated portion, so it's worth the extra pass with a magnet before you bale rather than after a buyer flags it.
Check a live price, then sell at a fixed price, run an auction, or negotiate directly.
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