Musca Scrap Metals was incorporated in 1998 as Musca Trading Ltd, a start-up business owned by Mark Fine which ran sports tours between the US and Cape Town. By 2001 the sports travel side was itself sidelined by the company pioneering the export trading of steel scrap in containers. Due to the total control exerted over the market in the Cape by the two dominant players, Musca Scrap Metals (as it had become known) operated everywhere except in the Western Cape. In October 2003 this changed when Musca Scrap Metals opened its doors in Salt River, Cape Town.

The initial function in Cape Town was to act as a ‘scrap co-operative’, where scrap dealers who did not have the marketing, volume or financial muscle to export on their own against the dominant players could deliver scrap to our packing facility and be paid a price more than triple what they had been accepting before. Due to market pressures Musca Scrap Metals in quick succession had to install balers for light (car body type) scrap, a weighbridge and other traditional scrap-handling equipment.