Copper is the best paying metal most people will ever have sitting in their shed. It is also the one where the price swings hardest depending on what state it turns up in. Same kilo, very different cheque.
Here is how Adelaide yards actually look at a load of copper, so you know what you have before you ring anyone.
The grades, in plain English
Bare bright
Clean, shiny, bare copper wire, thicker than about 1.6mm, no coating and no corrosion. Think the inside of a stripped power cable. This is the top of the tree and it pays the most per kilo of anything in the yard.
Number one copper
Clean copper pipe, tube, bus bar and heavy wire. No solder, no fittings, no paint, no insulation. Offcuts from a plumbing job are usually this, as long as nobody left the brass fittings on the ends.
Number two copper
Copper that is still copper but has something on it or wrong with it. Painted pipe, soldered joints, light gauge tube, a bit of corrosion or that green oxide. It is a step down, not a write-off.
PVC wire and insulated cable
Anything with plastic still on it. Adelaide yards price this on copper recovery, which is the percentage of the weight that is actually metal once the plastic is off. Heavy building cable has a high recovery and pays well. Thin phone or data cable is mostly plastic and pays accordingly.
Our rates
Indicative rates, the same ones on the home page. Metal markets move every week, so ring 0435 805 124 for the exact figure before you load up.
How that compares around Adelaide
Worth checking rather than taking anyone's word for it. Published Adelaide price guides in September 2026 had clean bright copper sitting around $15.00 to $18.00 a kilo, PVC wire around $5.50 to $10.00, and clean brass around $8.00 to $11.00. Our bands above cover the same ground.
If a yard quotes you well above those numbers over the phone, ask what grade that applies to before you drive there. The gap usually turns up at the weighbridge.
Why the price moves
Scrap copper tracks the global copper market and the Australian dollar, and both move every day. A yard buying today has to sell into next week's price, so the number you are quoted is tied to where the market actually is, not a sticker on the wall.
That is why nobody can publish one fixed figure and mean it. Anyone who gives you a hard number without asking what you have is either guessing or is going to find a reason to pay less when you turn up.
Four things that cost people money
- Mixing grades in one bin. If bare bright is sitting in with painted pipe and bits of brass, the whole lot gets priced at the lowest common grade. Separate it and you get paid per grade.
- Leaving brass fittings on copper pipe. Brass pays well on its own, but on the end of a copper pipe it drags that pipe down a grade. Thirty seconds with a hacksaw is worth real money.
- Burning cable. Do not. Inside metropolitan Adelaide the Environment Protection (Air Quality) Policy 2016 only allows open fires for cooking, a charcoal brazier or fire pit, and approved vegetation burns. Cable is not on that list, and burning without a required permit is a $300 fine under section 34 of the Environment Protection Act 1993. Burnt copper gets downgraded anyway, because the yard cannot assess what is under the soot.
- Guessing the weight and not weighing it. Copper is heavier than people expect. Ask to watch the scales. Any yard worth dealing with will have no problem with that.
Bring ID
Standard practice at any decent Adelaide yard, and South Australia's new scrap metal laws will make identification and transaction records compulsory once they start. Nothing has changed yet, but it is coming, so get used to having your licence on you.
What to do with a load
Sort it into the grades above as best you can, get a rough weight, then ring. If it is more than you want to shift yourself we will come and get it. Pickup is free across Holden Hill, Modbury, Tea Tree Gully, Campbelltown and the rest of Adelaide's north-east.