After collection, cable goes through mechanical shredding, magnetic separation to remove any steel content such as armour, and granulation, which chops the material down and uses airflow to separate copper granules from plastic insulation. Properly processed cable recovers up to around 99% of the copper content, which is then sold on to be remelted into new copper products.
- Cable recycling is a mechanical, dry physical process, not burning, which is illegal in the UK and destroys value rather than recovering it.
- Steel wire armour is removed early in the process using magnetic separation, before the remaining copper and insulation are separated from each other.
- The final separation step uses airflow and vibration to split lightweight plastic insulation from denser copper granules, since the two materials do not need to touch water or chemicals to be separated.
- Recovered copper granules are sold on to be remelted into new copper products, while the separated plastic is also recycled rather than sent to landfill.
- Understanding this process explains why grade and preparation genuinely affect payment: the machinery works on physical properties, not on how the cable looked when you handed it over.
Why It’s Worth Knowing What Happens to Your Cable
Most guides to selling scrap cable stop at the point of payment. What actually happens to the material afterwards rarely gets explained, which is a shame, because understanding the process answers a lot of questions people have anyway: why burning cable is both illegal and pointless, why grade matters so much to price, and where the copper you handed over actually ends up.
It also matters for a more practical reason. The recycling process is a physical, mechanical one built around specific material properties, weight, magnetism, particle size, which is exactly why the grading and preparation guidance covered elsewhere on this site works the way it does. Once you see the machinery involved, the pricing logic stops feeling arbitrary.
Step One, Sorting and Inspection on Arrival
Before any cable reaches processing machinery, it goes through an initial sort and inspection. This is partly a grading exercise, working out whether material is dry bright wire, high grade, household or armoured cable, and partly a check for anything that should not go through the machinery at all, such as unrelated scrap metal mixed into a load, or contamination that needs removing by hand first.
This manual stage matters more than people expect. Industry descriptions of cable processing facilities note that materials go through manual sorting on arrival specifically to make sure no unrelated scrap metal residue is mixed in with the cable before it moves further down the line.
Step Two, Primary Shredding
Once sorted, cable goes through a primary shredder, a heavy-duty machine designed to break cable down into smaller, more manageable pieces as the first mechanical step in the process. At this stage, the goal is simply size reduction, taking long lengths of coiled or tangled cable and reducing them to a consistent, processable size, not yet separating any materials from each other.
Step Three, Removing Steel Armour
For armoured cable specifically, this is the stage where the steel wire armour is separated out. Because steel is magnetic and copper is not, a magnetic separator can pull the armour away from the rest of the shredded material cleanly, without needing to touch or damage the copper core underneath.
This is precisely why armoured cable’s price per kg reflects its lower copper recovery percentage. The steel armour adds real weight to what you hand over, but that weight is removed at this stage and does not convert into copper value, however well the rest of the process runs.
Step Four, Secondary Shredding and Granulation
The material then typically passes through a second, finer shredding stage, chopping the cable down further into small granules. At this point, what remains is a mix of copper and plastic insulation, both reduced to a similar small particle size, but not yet separated from one another.
This is where the copper cable granulator itself does its work. Manufacturers of this equipment describe the granulator as combining shredding, crushing and separation technologies, feeding raw shredded cable in at one end and, further down the process, releasing separated copper granules from one outlet and plastic granules from another.
Step Five, Separating Copper From Plastic
This is the step that actually recovers the value from the cable, and it works entirely on a physical property: density. Copper is considerably denser than the plastic insulation that surrounds it, so once both materials have been reduced to a similar granule size, airflow and vibration can separate them without any water, chemicals or heat involved.
The shredded mixture passes over an air table or through an airflow separation chamber. Lighter plastic granules are lifted and carried away by the airflow, while denser copper granules, unaffected by the same airflow, fall through or are collected separately. Some more advanced setups add a secondary screening or electrostatic separation step to improve purity further where needed.
This dry physical separation method is standard across the industry specifically because it avoids the pollution risks associated with older or improper recovery methods. Industry sources describe this dry approach as preferable precisely because it does not introduce water pollution and can achieve very high purity without it.
What Copper Recovery Percentage Actually Looks Like in Practice
Manufacturers of copper cable granulating equipment commonly describe minimum copper recovery rates of around 99% for material processed through a well-run granulation line, meaning almost all of the copper physically present in the cable is successfully separated out and recovered, rather than being lost as waste alongside the plastic.
That figure describes processing efficiency, not the copper content of your original cable. A kilogram of low grade armoured cable might only be a quarter to a third copper by weight to begin with, covered in detail in our grading guide, and a 99% recovery rate applied to that lower starting percentage still yields far less copper than the same recovery rate applied to a kilogram of high grade cable. Recovery efficiency and starting composition are two separate things, and both affect what a load is ultimately worth.
Where the Recovered Materials Actually Go
Copper granules
Once separated and checked for purity, copper granules are bagged and sold on to manufacturers, who remelt them into copper rod, which is then drawn into new wire and used in new cable, electrical products, and countless other applications. This is the core of what makes copper recycling genuinely valuable rather than symbolic: the recovered metal goes directly back into active use, not into storage or disposal.
Plastic insulation
The PVC and other plastic material separated out during granulation does not simply become waste either. Properly run facilities process the separated plastic for recycling in its own right, rather than sending it to landfill, closing the loop on both materials the cable was originally made from.
Steel armour
Where present, the magnetically separated steel armour is recycled through standard ferrous metal recycling routes, entirely separate from the non-ferrous copper stream, since ferrous and non-ferrous scrap are processed and valued completely differently.
Why This Process Cannot Be Replicated by Burning
Understanding the actual mechanical process makes it obvious why burning cable, beyond being illegal under Section 33 of the Clean Air Act 1993, simply does not achieve the same outcome as proper processing. Granulation physically separates copper from plastic using density differences, keeping the copper’s structure and purity intact. Burning, by contrast, does not cleanly separate anything, it degrades the insulation into toxic smoke and leaves behind copper that is often contaminated with ash, oxidation and partially combusted residue, which can make grading and processing harder rather than easier.
The industry’s own move away from burning decades ago, replaced entirely by dry physical separation, reflects exactly this: burning was never actually a good recovery method even before it was made illegal, it was simply a crude shortcut that damaged both the environment and the material itself.
Why Recycled Copper Genuinely Matters Environmentally
This is worth understanding on its own terms, separate from the mechanics of the process, because the environmental case for cable recycling is unusually strong compared with many other recycling categories.
Multiple independent industry sources converge on a consistent figure: producing copper from recycled material uses roughly 85 to 90% less energy than extracting and refining the same amount of copper from newly mined ore. That is not a marginal improvement, it means the vast majority of the energy cost of getting copper into usable form is avoided entirely when the copper comes from recycling rather than mining.
There is also a quality argument that does not apply to every recycled material. Copper can be recycled repeatedly without any loss of quality or performance, unlike some plastics or paper, which degrade a little with each recycling cycle. Recycled copper is chemically indistinguishable from newly mined copper once refined, meaning the copper granules recovered from your cable are not a lesser substitute, they go back into new wire and cable on entirely equal terms.
The scale of this matters too. Industry estimates suggest around two thirds of all copper mined in the past century or more remains in productive use today, much of it having been recycled multiple times over that period, which is a meaningful part of why global copper demand has not run ahead of usable supply despite copper’s central role in electrification, construction and renewable energy infrastructure.
None of this changes what you are paid for your cable, price is set by the mechanics covered elsewhere in this guide, grade, weight, and the copper market. But it is a real, well-documented reason why proper recycling matters beyond the transaction itself, and why processing cable proceeds through licensed, mechanical recovery routes rather than being treated as low-value waste.
The Cable Recycling Process at a Glance
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Sorting and inspection | Manual check for grade and any unrelated contamination |
| Primary shredding | Cable reduced to a manageable, consistent size |
| Magnetic separation | Steel armour pulled away from copper and insulation |
| Secondary shredding, granulation | Material chopped further into small, similarly sized granules |
| Air and vibration separation | Copper and plastic granules split apart by density |
How Processing Differs by Cable Grade
| Grade | What makes its processing different |
|---|---|
| Dry Bright Wire | Already stripped, so it skips shredding and separation entirely and goes straight to melting |
| High Grade 60% Cable | Standard shredding and granulation, high copper yield relative to processing effort |
| Household Cable | Standard shredding and granulation, moderate copper yield due to thicker insulation |
| Low Grade / Armoured Cable | Requires an extra magnetic separation stage to remove steel armour before granulation |
Who This Explanation Isn’t For
This is not a guide to building or buying recycling machinery, and it deliberately avoids manufacturer-level technical specification, throughput rates, or equipment model comparisons, which belong in a different kind of resource aimed at recycling businesses rather than sellers.
It is also not a substitute for the grading and preparation guidance covered elsewhere on this site. Knowing what happens during processing helps explain why grade and preparation matter, but it will not tell you which grade your own cable falls into or whether stripping it yourself is worth the time, both of which are covered in dedicated guides.
Common Misunderstandings About the Recycling Process
Assuming all the copper in a load is automatically recovered regardless of processing
Recovery depends on running material through the proper mechanical process. Contaminated, burnt, or improperly handled cable can lose copper into the waste stream that a clean, properly processed load would have recovered.
Assuming stripping cable yourself achieves the same result as the granulation process
Manual stripping removes insulation but does not separate materials with the same precision or efficiency as mechanical granulation, and for anything beyond small volumes, it is far more time consuming for a smaller practical benefit than people expect, covered in detail in our cable preparation guide.
Assuming plastic insulation is simply thrown away
Properly run facilities recycle the separated plastic rather than sending it to landfill, which is part of why dry physical separation, rather than burning, has become the industry standard.
Assuming the process is the same for every cable type
Armoured cable requires an extra magnetic separation stage that household or dry bright wire does not need, which is one of the reasons armoured cable involves more processing complexity, reflected in its price per kg.
Cable Recycling Process Myths
Myth: “Burning is basically the same process, just faster.”
It is not. Burning does not separate materials cleanly, produces toxic smoke, and is a criminal offence under the Clean Air Act 1993. Mechanical granulation achieves a cleaner separation with no combustion involved at all.
Myth: “The plastic insulation is just waste with no value.”
Separated plastic insulation is processed for recycling in its own right at properly run facilities, rather than being discarded.
Myth: “All scrap cable processing facilities work the same way with the same equipment.”
Processing complexity varies by cable type. Armoured cable needs magnetic separation for its steel content that other grades do not require, and different granulator setups vary in throughput, screening stages and purity achieved.
Our Verdict: Proper Processing Is Why Grade and Preparation Matter
Once you see the actual mechanical steps involved, the pricing and grading logic covered elsewhere on this site stops feeling arbitrary. Copper recovery percentage is not a marketing figure, it reflects a real physical separation process built around density and magnetism. Armoured cable is priced lower because its steel armour genuinely has to be mechanically removed before any copper recovery happens. Dry bright wire is priced highest because it has already had that separation work done.
This is also why proper, licensed processing matters beyond just legality. A facility running material through genuine mechanical separation recovers value that burning, crude stripping, or improper handling would lose, for both the seller and the environment.
What Happens to Your Cable After Recycling FAQ
Q1 Does my cable get burned during recycling?
No. Burning cable insulation is illegal in the UK under the Clean Air Act 1993 and is not part of any legitimate recycling process. Cable is processed mechanically, using shredding and density-based separation, not heat.
Q2 How is copper actually separated from the plastic insulation?
Once cable is shredded into small granules, airflow and vibration separate the material by density, since copper is considerably denser than plastic insulation and behaves differently in an airflow separation chamber.
Q3 What happens to the plastic insulation that gets removed?
Properly run facilities process the separated plastic for recycling rather than sending it to landfill, meaning both materials the cable was made from get a genuine second use.
Q4 Why does armoured cable need extra processing compared to other grades?
The steel wire armour has to be removed using magnetic separation before the remaining copper and insulation can go through the standard granulation process, adding a processing stage that other grades do not require.
Q5 What percentage of copper is actually recovered during processing?
Well-run mechanical granulation typically recovers close to 99% of the copper physically present in the cable, though that figure describes processing efficiency, not how much copper your specific cable contained to begin with.
Q6 Where does the recovered copper end up?
Recovered copper granules are sold on to manufacturers, who remelt them into copper rod and draw it into new wire and cable, feeding directly back into active use rather than storage or disposal.
Q7 Does stripping my own cable at home achieve the same result as the recycling process?
Not quite. Manual stripping removes insulation but does not achieve the same precision of separation as mechanical granulation, and is only genuinely worth the time on larger volumes of high grade cable, covered in our separate preparation guide.
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