Agilyx Corp., Beaverton, Oregon, has announced plans to transition a Portland, Oregon, waste plastics-to-oil facility to the latest Agilyx Generation 6 technology.

The facility, which opened in early 2013 as a Waste Management-owned operation, has been using the Agilyx Generation 5 batch system. Agilyx is nearing completion of its new continuous feed technology in its Tigard, Oregon, R&D Center. The North Portland facility, known as Wastech, is expected to be the first commercial deployment of the new Generation 6 technology.

“We are delighted to have the opportunity to launch our new technology in Portland and look forward to continued cooperation with Waste Management, who has been a supportive partner during our development stage,” says Agilyx Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ross M. Patten. “The new facility has the capability of becoming a great solution for waste plastics as the region moves forward with zero waste initiatives.”

Agilyx says the transition process is expected to be completed in fourth quarter 2015, with the facility designed to handle 50 tons of waste plastic per day with a production target of 10,000 gallons of crude oil daily. The upgraded facility is expected to create 30 jobs, the company adds. In addition, this will mark the first Agilyx owned and operated facility that will be open to commercial plastic generators and aggregators.

Founded in 2006, Agilix says it uses a patented, scalable and versatile technology that minimizes carbon impacts. Agilyx claims to enhance recovery and zero-waste initiatives by turning waste plastic disposal costs into high-quality oil revenue streams.

The company’s systems are deployed with industrial and municipal waste plastic generators and aggregators looking to extract the often-unused and untapped energy contained within waste plastic.

Visit www.agilyx.com for more informaiton.

Andritz MeWa, part of the Germany-based Andritz Group, has completed a recycling plant for electrical and electronic scrap and refrigerators in the town of Karcag in eastern Hungary. The plant is the start of the new Eco-Center being set up in Karcag intended to strengthen the region’s economy with several hundred new jobs. At the end of March 2014, politicians and representatives from the business sector attended the celebrations to open the country’s largest recycling center for electronic scrap, Andritz reports.

The combined plant is designed to recycle 20,000 tons of electrical and electronic scrap as well as over 150,000 refrigerators a year to meet the latest European environmental standards and with a recycling quota nearing 95%. According to Andritz, the plant provides flexibility because it offers different operating modes depending on application.

The center features an Andritz MeWa QZ 2000 cross-flow shredder for disintegration of bonded materials, as well as a UG 1000 MSL granulator for reducing the material to a specific size. The company says that parts containing hazardous substances, such as batteries and capacitors, are left intact during the process and can be removed afterwards. The harmful gases contained in the cooling liquids and insulation of refrigerators are removed by suction and collected. Fractions containing valuable substances, such as aluminium, copper, iron and plastics, remain and can be removed with a suitable separation method, Andritz says.

Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing, a Hong Kong-based paper company, has started up a new recycled board line in China’s Sichuan province. The PM20 paper line will have an annual capacity of 320,000 metric tons of recycled containerboard per year.

In its semi-annual report, the company, one of the largest paper companies in China, also noted that its expansion project in Vietnam is on schedule and is expected to be operational by the end of 2014. When that recycled board line is complete it will be capable of producing an additional 400,000 metric tons of recycled paperboard products per year.

Despite the new capacity, in its interim report Lee & Man says it expects to face greater competitive pricing challenges in the second half of 2014.  The company cites the sluggish economy in China, along with a general weakness in exports as primary areas of concern.

With the slowing Chinese economy, Lee & Man says it plans to slow its pace of capacity expansion; instead using funds to pay down debt.

Despite the short-term concerns, Lee & Man feels long run prospects are promising as the demand for packaging papers in China will likely continue to increase and more backward production capacities will close due to limited competitive power and tightened environmental protection regulations.