How We Collect Our Rates

Every price on this site is an indicative range, not an exact quote for any single transaction. Scrap prices at Shershah Kabari Market vary by grade, quantity, buyer relationship, and negotiation on any given day. Nobody, including us, can quote one exact number that applies to every deal. What we publish is our best estimate of the range dealers are trading in.

Where the numbers come from

1. Global anchor. For metals traded on the London Metal Exchange (currently copper and aluminium), we pull a daily reference price and track it alongside the local rate, since Karachi scrap prices move with global metal prices.
2. USD/PKR exchange rate. Local scrap prices track the dollar closely, so we publish the day's exchange rate next to every metal that has a global anchor.
3. Local Karachi rates. Sourced directly from contacts at Shershah Kabari Market and entered by our team.
4. Public rate reports. Anyone can report today's rate on any material page. Reports are held for review, checked against recent history, and outliers are discarded before we publish a median. A phone number with a track record of accurate reports gets approved faster; one with a track record of bad reports gets flagged and, eventually, ignored.
5. Automated Pakistan rate tracking. No API exists for hyperlocal scrap pricing; nothing like that is sold as a data product anywhere. Where we don't yet have a fresh local or reported rate for a material on a given day, we pull an indicative national (or, for iron, Karachi-specific) range from public Pakistani scrap-rate trackers every couple of hours, so the figure keeps moving through the day instead of sitting stale. If a source publishes a single national-average figure rather than a range, we band it into a small indicative spread instead of presenting it as an exact price. This is always the lowest-priority source: a rate entered by our team or a verified public report takes precedence over it whenever one exists for that day.
6. Derived rates. A small number of materials, currently cable/wire, are never quoted as their own line item anywhere. Scrap cable is priced as a fraction of bare copper, based on how much copper it yields once stripped. Where no direct rate exists, we calculate one from that day's copper price using a standard insulated-wire copper-content ratio (50-60% of bare copper), marked clearly as a calculated figure rather than an observed one.

What "range" means

The low and high figures on each material page reflect the spread we've seen reported or observed for that day, not a guaranteed price you'll get. The average is a simple mean of the accepted data points for that day, not a weighted market index.

Update times

Global and exchange-rate anchors refresh once daily in the morning. Local rates and public reports are reviewed and published as they come in. Every rate page shows exactly when it was last updated. If a material hasn't had a fresh, verified report recently, we say so rather than showing a stale number as if it were current.

Corrections

If a rate looks wrong to you, tell us. Dealer feedback is how we catch a bad report before it skews the day's figure.

No warranty

None of the above is a guarantee. We publish our best estimate given what's available to us at the time, from sources we don't always control. See our terms of use for how that limits what we're responsible for.