Top Stories
Cash for Trash
Business Week (08/04/08) No. 4094, P. 36; Farzad, Roben
The potential to reap massive profits from recycling and reselling scrap—which has become very lucrative as the price of raw materials soars—has prompted a wave of startup investments by venture capitalists and buyout firms.
Salvaging Business
Dubuque Telegraph Herald (IA) (08/03/08) Reber, Craig D.
Moor's Salvage & Recovery of Wisconsin is a 35-year veteran of the metal scrap recycling business, starting out as a parts yard for scrap cars and evolving into a multimillion-dollar titan that processes scrap for ferrous and nonferrous metal.
N.J. Recycler Seeks a Greener, Profitable Future
Pallet Enterprise (08/08) Boyles, Carolee Anita
New Jersey recycler Tony Pallet plans to hold fast to its motto, "Keeping it Green for the Next Generation," by doing more than recycling wood pallets.
Uber Recycling: A Day at a Scrap Metal Yard
Tri State Observer (07/30/08) Thompson, Jonathan
The scrap boom is enabling Recla Metals to net about three times more for 2,500-pound bales of aluminum cans compared with a few years ago. On today's market, the Montrose, Colo.-based scrap metal recycler now nets about $2,500 for each bale.
Scrap Metal Pays
MyFox Hampton Roads (43) (07/30/08) Young, Kay
Dubin Metals in Norfolk, Va., gets approximately 100 visitors each day who sell scrap metals. Douglas Moses, whose family has been in the scrap metal recycling business for more than six decades, says stealing is a significant problem in the industry. Moses says he takes such steps as requiring "a government-issued I.D. with a date of birth, a photo, an I.D. number, and address.
Recycling Spurs Firm's Growth
Detroit News (07/30/08) P. 2C; Haldane, Neal
Great Lakes Recycling will spend $10 million to build a new recycling facility in Huron Township, Mich. The new facility, scheduled to open in November with a staff of 30, will process approximately 100,000 tons of paper, glass, metal, and other materials.
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Scrap Consumers Form Group To Fight Trade Barriers
The Steel Manufacturers Association
(Washington, D.C.), the American Foundry Society
(Schaumburg, Ill.), and the National Precast Concrete Association
(Indianapolis) have formed the American Scrap Coalition
(Washington, D.C.) to fight global barriers to the trade in steel scrap.
More than 20 countries—including Brazil, Russia, China, and India—restrict
ferrous scrap exports to protect their domestic steel industries, the
group reports. In contrast, U.S. ferrous scrap exports have tripled
since 2000. This is creating a "steel scrap export crisis," the
group says, by distorting trade and raising domestic ferrous scrap prices.
The coalition is calling on Congress, the U.S. Trade Representative,
and the Commerce Department to take immediate action to remove barriers
to other countries' steel scrap exports.
ISRI
President Robin Weiner welcomed the coalition's support of free and
fair markets but questioned the characterization of today's steel
scrap market as a crisis for steelmakers. The U.S. steel industry is
recording record profits; mills are operating near or at capacity; and
finished steel prices are rising faster than scrap prices, according
to analyst Anthony Rizzuto of Dahlman Rose & Co. (New York). Further,
finished steel exports have grown more than 81 percent since 2001, Weiner
noted. "Rather than a crisis, both the steel industry and the scrap
industry are enjoying extraordinarily strong export markets due to the
quick pace of global infrastructure development," she said.
The
American Scrap Coalition is a successor to the Emergency Steel Scrap
Coalition, which in 2004 advocated restricting U.S. ferrous scrap exports.
Visit www.scrapcoalition.com.
Mergers And Acquisitions
- OmniSource Corp. (Fort
Wayne, Ind.) has acquired the remaining equity interest in Recycle
South (Spartanburg, S.C.). OmniSource, which already held a 25 percent
interest in Recycle South, purchased the remainder for approximately
$500 million. Recycle South was created by the 2007 merger of Carolinas
Recycling Group and Atlantic Scrap and Processing. It will now operate
as a division of OmniSource called OmniSource Southeast. Steel Dynamics
(Fort Wayne, Ind.), which acquired OmniSource in October 2007, will,
with the addition of Recycle South, have a total annual ferrous scrap
processing capacity of approximately 7 million mt. All of Recycle South's
management will remain in place.
In
related news, Recycle South has acquired a group of three North
Carolina companies—Cohen & Green Salvage Co. (Fayetteville,
N.C.), Lumberton Recycling Co. (Lumberton, N.C.), and Raeford
Salvage Co. (Raeford, N.C.). The management and employees will remain
in place at each location. With this acquisition, Recycle South will
now have 22 scrap metal processing facilities with approximately 700
employees.
Visit www.omnisource.com
or www.steeldynamics.com.
- SA Recycling (Anaheim,
Calif.), a joint venture of Sims Group Ltd. (New York) and Adams Steel
(Anaheim, Calif.), has acquired Pacific Coast Recycling (Long
Beach, Calif.) from Mitsui & Co. (Tokyo). PCR's seven facilities
in California process annual shipments of approximately 1 million mt.
Visit www.sarecycling.com.
- Metalico (Crawford,
N.J.) has purchased Snyder Group
(Brownsville, Pa.), a multi-yard, fully integrated scrap metal recycling
operation in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, for $76 million.
The purchase includes two principal operating sites and four feeder
yards that combined generated $120 million in sales and processed 300,000
tons of ferrous and nonferrous last year. Metalico now operates 14 recycling
facilities in six states. The former owners and employees will continue
to operate the Snyder Group, which will now be called Metalico Neville.
Visit www.metalico.com.
ArcelorMittal
(Luxembourg) has acquired Bakermet (Ottawa, Canada), a scrap
company which processed approximately 130,000 short tons of ferrous
and 40 million pounds of nonferrous metals last year. This acquisition
will ensure upstream self-sufficiency for ArcelorMittal's mill in
Contrecoeur, Canada, the company stated. The management of Bakermet
will remain in place.
Visit
www.arcelormittal.com. Prab and its sister
company Hapman, through parent company Kalamazoo Acquisition
Corp., have acquired Envirodyne Technologies. Envirodyne
Technologies encompasses Kalamazoo Fabricating Division, a full-service
steel and stainless steel fabricating facility; STC Dip Spin, which
offers centrifugal coating equipment to the finishing industry; and
The MonlanGroup, a supplier of coolant recovery and filtration systems.
All of these companies are based in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Visit www.prab.com
or www.hapman.com. Lincoln Electric Holdings
(Cleveland, Ohio) has acquired Electro-Arco (Pinhal-Novo, Portugal),
a welding-consumables manufacturer. Electro-Arco, an exporter to markets
throughout Europe, has sales of about $40 million and employs 165 people.
The addition of Electro-Arco expands Lincoln's European consumables
manufacturing capacity and widens its European commercial presence,
the company states.
Visit
www.electro-arco.com.
Openings And Expansions
As a part of its plan to expand
throughout the Southeastern United States, Blaze Recycling &
Metals (Norcross, Ga.) has acquired a site in Marietta, Ga., which
it intends to open as a scrap metal buying facility. The new facility
will purchase both ferrous and nonferrous scrap and will become the
company's seventh full-service facility when it begins operation this
summer.
Visit www.blazerecycling.com. Tube City IMS' (Glassport,
Pa.) Tube City division has opened its first trading offices in Singapore
and Gent, Belgium. In addition, it has expanded its representative trading
offices in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Beijing.
Visit www.tubecity.com. Metso Minerals (Helsinki,
Finland) has begun assembling the Lindemann LIS scrap shear in
North America. The shear, which can produce up to 20 mt per hour and
is available in stationary and semi-mobile configurations, is manufactured
at Metso Minerals' Brunswick, Ohio, location but also can be ordered
at its San Antonio location.
Visit www.metsominerals.com. Steinert has established its
fourth foreign subsidiary, Steinert Japan
(Tokyo, Japan), as a joint sales venture with its Japanese partners
in which Steinert has a majority holding. Robert Marwinski will serve
as managing and sales director and Bernd Lowigus will be technical director
of the joint venture.
Visit www.steinert.de. Gehl Co. (West Bend,
Wis.) has begun construction of a new $20 million expansion project
in West Bend, Wis., which will house its corporate headquarters and
research and development center. Gehl, which manufactures compact equipment
including skid-steers and excavators, will use its new 70,000-square-foot
research and development building to design and test equipment for performance
and durability and to validate new equipment designs.
Visit www.gehl.com.
Electronics Recycling Roundup
Sims Recycling Solutions
(Sydney, Australia), which operates as Sims E-Recycling in Australia,
has acquired Clearhouse Technology
(Melbourne, Australia). Clearhouse offers collection, data protection,
redeployment, and remarketing of obsolete IT equipment. Company founders
Tony Nestola and Glenn Reid will continue as consultants to Sims.
Visit
www.sims-group.com. E-World Recyclers (Vista,
Calif.) has partnered with AERC Recycling Solutions (Allentown,
Pa.) to recycle electronics throughout the United States. AERC, working
with subsidiary Com-Cycle (Flanders, N.J.), will recycle CRTs on the
East Coast using E-World's patented hot-wire CRT separators, which
remove leaded glass without shredding. E-World will handle the monitor
and TV glass on the West Coast and implement AERC's technology for
handling the mercury in flat-screen displays. AERC also will serve E-World
customers throughout the country at its facilities in California, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. The terms of the partnership
were not disclosed.
In
further AERC news, company subsidiary Com-Cycle (Flanders, N.J.)
has launched a new processing facility in Houston. The 35,000-square-foot
facility will offer secure data management services including equipment
disassembly, refurbishment of electronics to be resold, and sanitation
of data storage devices.
Visit www.com-cycle.com.
Honors And Achievements
The Steel
Manufacturers Association (Washington, D.C.) has named Schnitzer
Steel's (Portland, Ore.) two auto parts businesses, Pick-n-Pull
(Rancho Cordova, Calif.) and GreenLeaf Auto Recyclers (Arlington,
Texas), "Recycler of the Year" for their mercury switch removal
and recycling. The businesses, which together recycle 300,000 automobiles
annually in 53 locations across the United States and Canada, participate
in the National Vehicle Mercury Switch Recovery Program. Having recycled
more than 110,000 switches since they joined the program in 2006, the
companies have safely removed more than 244 pounds of mercury from end-of-life
vehicles. The Commonwealth of Virginia's Department
of Environmental Quality also has recognized Schnitzer for its Pick-n-Pull
operation in Virginia Beach, which has removed more than 7,000 mercury
switches as part of the state's mercury removal program, more than
half of all the switches removed under the program. The removal has
kept 13.6 pounds of mercury out of Virginia's environment, according
to DEQ.
Visit www.schnitzersteel.com
and www.steelnet.com. Alaskans for Litter Prevention
and Recycling (Anchorage, Alaska) gave Smurfit-Stone Container
Corp.'s Anchorage, Alaska, recycling plant its 2007 Board of Directors
Award, in part due to its "Flying Cans" program, which partners
with regional airlines to enable rural communities in Alaska to send
their aluminum cans to Anchorage for recycling. Smurfit-Stone's Anchorage
recycling center is Alaska's largest full-service recycling plant,
processing approximately 2,000 tons of recyclables a month.
Visit
www.alparalaska.com. Tube City IMS Corp.'s
(Glassport, Pa.) Ecorse, Mich., facility has passed an ISO 9001:2000
quality system surveillance audit to retain the quality system certification
it has held since May 2002.
Visit www.tubecity.com. In April, Sennebogen
(Charlotte, N.C.) recognized Gibson Machinery (Cleveland),
Binder Machinery (South Plainfield, N.J.), and Briggs Construction
Equipment (Charlotte, N.C.) as its top three distributors in North
America for 2007. Visit www.sennebogen.com.
Equipment Sales and Installations
RPM Recycling (Wind
Gap, Pa.) has purchased two Eriez (Erie, Pa.) machines: a 90-inch-wide
ProSort metal sorter and a 60-inch-wide FinesSort separator. RPM will
use both machines in its scrapyard near Allentown, Pa. The wTe Recycling
Corp. (Greenfield, Mass.) also has ordered a 90-inch-wide Eriez
ProSort metal sorter, which will be used by its metals division.
Visit www.eriez.com. Algona Steel (Sault
Ste. Marie, Ontario) has bought a meltshop scrap optimization system
and scrap loading system from Management Science Associates'
(Pittsburgh) metals and advanced manufacturing division. The company
will use the MSOS to optimize scrap purchasing and scrap charge preparation
and determine the most cost-effective mix of raw materials. MSA also
has provided Algoma Steel with a scrap box tracking system.
Visit www.msa.com.
Sennebogen Adds Michigan Distributor
Wolverine Tractor and Equipment Co.
is now the distributor of Sennebogen purpose-built material handlers
for all of the lower peninsula of Michigan. Wolverine, Michigan's
oldest equipment dealer, has sold more than ten machines to scrap metal
companies since September 2007 and seeks to explore other applications
for Sennebogen machines, like port applications and hardwood forestry.
Visit www.sennebogen.com
or www.wolverineusedequipment.com.
Grossman Group Divides Into Three CompaniesThe Grossman Group (Columbus,
Ohio), has given its three divisions separate corporate structures.
The recycling division, including its Columbus recycling plant, will
become Grossman Environmental Recycling; Industrialbags.com will manufacture
and sell lumber wrap and other poly materials; and The Grossman Group
will be a materials marketing and environmental consulting company.
The reorganization will facilitate the expansion of each business segment,
the company reports.
Visit
www.thegrossmangroup.com.
Resources
The National Demolition
Association (Doylestown, Pa.) has released two white papers on environmental
issues facing the demolition industry. The first,
Demolition Industry Promotes C&D Recycling,
outlines the current state of construction and demolition material recycling
in the United States and makes a case for government-industry partnership
in increasing the demolition debris recycling rate. The second, Demolition:
The First Step of Reconstruction, explains the similarities and
differences between deconstruction and demolition; the challenges of
deconstruction, including its impact on worker safety and the environment;
and how modern demolition practices achieve current levels of recycling
and reuse.
Call 800/541-2412 or e-mail info@demolitionassociation.com.
Got Milk Crates? Give Them Back
ISRI has spread the word about the problem
of beer keg theft, urging its members not to accept kegs from anyone
but brewers or distributors. Plastic milk and bakery crate theft is
a similar problem with a similar solution, according to the International
Dairy Foods Association (Washington, D.C.), which reports that U.S.
milk crate theft costs the industry $100 million a year. One dairy,
Rock View Farms (Downey, Calif.), reported spending $1.3 million in
2007 to replace hundreds of thousands of stolen milk crates at $4 each.
The company has begun using corrugated cartons in place of the crates.
The crates are the property of the company
whose name is printed on them, IDFA says. Restaurants, convenience stores,
and supermarkets rarely secure empty crates, however, leaving them vulnerable
to students and others who take them for storage and crafts projects
or to shred and resell as scrap plastic, an increasingly valuable commodity.
Responding to dairy farmers' complaints,
in 2007 the state of California enacted a law making it illegal for
an unauthorized person to possess more than five milk crates or to shred
or otherwise destroy crates. The law requires scrapyards to obtain proof
of ownership before recycling the crates. ISRI urges recyclers to refuse
to accept milk or bakery crates without the authorization of the bakery,
dairy, or product distributor identified on the crate.
Fund Honors Youngstown, Atlas Owner
Youngstown Iron and Metal (Youngstown,
Ohio), Atlas Recycling (Warren, Ohio), SGM Magnetics (Sarasota,
Fla.), and accounting firm Bodine Perry (Canfield, Ohio) have
formed the Martin L. Wilhelm Memorial Fund with the Wilhelm family
to honor the former owner of Youngstown and Atlas, who died in a car
crash while on a scrap buying trip to Trinidad and Tobago in November
2006. The fund's goals are to promote environmental awareness and
environmental protection by funding scholarships, research, and other
projects in areas such as environmental management, energy efficiency,
air quality, conservation, and security. The fund accepts contributions
online and by mail.
Visit www.thewilhelmfoundation.org.
Artist Makes Statement With Scrap
This spring, the National Geographic
Museum (Washington, D.C.) exhibited an installation of artist H.A. Schult's
Trash People, a set of life-size, human-shaped sculptures constructed
primarily from scrap. Many of the figures on exhibit were composed of
aluminum and steel cans, with a few consisting of scrap electronics,
plastics, and batteries.
Though
the Washington installation contained only 50 figures, Schult created
1,000 of them—with the help of 30 assistant—starting in 1996 and has
displayed them en masse in historic locations such as on the Great Wall
of China, in front of the pyramids in Egypt, and in Red Square in Moscow.
The artist has said the project makes a statement about the extraordinary
amount of waste humans produce and discard and its impact on the environment.
Schult created the figures entirely from materials he purchased for
80,000 deutschemarks (about 41,000€) at a municipal waste facility
in his hometown of Cologne, Germany. A 2006 news report said his gallery
sells them for 6,000€ apiece.
Visit
www.haschult.de.
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