Investment firm Kamine Development Corp. (KDC), Bedminster, New Jersey, and Celadon, a technology firm, are proposing to invest $160 million into a paper and cardboard recycling plant on land in the Port of Tampa Bay, Florida.

In December 2019, KDC and Celadon formed a partnership to recycle mixed paper and old corrugated containers (OCC) into recycled pulp. According to a press release from KDC last December, Celadon had identified two sites that the firms could invest in for about $300 million with a goal to use those sites to recycle mixed paper and OCC into recycled pulp. KDC had indicated that the companies planned to start construction on those sites in 2020.

“KDC is excited to work with Celadon to help build, own and operate their two major production facilities and upcycle more than 800,000 tons of cardboard and [scrap] paper per year,” Hal Kamine, CEO and founder of KDC, says in KDC’s press release in December 2019.

According to a report in the Tampa Bay Times newspaper, the proposed facility in the Port of Tampa Bay would create 96 jobs in Hillsborough County, Florida. The Tampa Bay Times reports that as part of a deal to start the site, Hillsborough County would be asked to forego half of the company’s property taxes for a seven-year period beginning in 2025, which is allowable under a 2010 voter-approved tax abatement program that expires this November. The county is planning to vote on this tax reduction at a hearing Oct. 21.

Cascades Inc., Kingsey Falls, Quebec, has announced that it is moving forward on converting its White Birch Bear Island paper mill in Ashland, Virginia, to a containerboard machine to produce lightweight, 100-percent-recycled linerboard and medium for the North American market.

Cascades initially acquired the Bear Island paper mill from Greenwich, Connecticut-based White Birch Paper in 2018 for $34.2 million. According to a news release from Cascades, the company says it plans to convert the mill to containerboard by the first quarter of 2021.

The total cost of the Bear Island conversion will be about $380 million, which includes the initial $35 million acquisition cost paid to White Birch Paper in 2018. To finance the equity portion of the Bear Island mill conversion, Cascades says it has entered into an agreement with CIBC Capital Markets, RBC Capital Markets and BMO Capital Markets on behalf of a syndicate of underwriters, pursuant to which Cascades will issue from treasury and the underwriters will purchase on a “bought deal basis” 7.441 million common shares at a price of $16.80 per common share for gross proceeds of about $125 million. Following the completion of this offering, the equity requirements of the Bear Island mill project will be fully financed, Cascades states.

According to Cascades, the Bear Island plant will have an annual production capacity of about 465,000 tons and is scheduled to start up by the fourth quarter of 2022. It will operate at about 80 percent of capacity by the end of 2023, reaching 100 percent by the end of 2025.

“This investment, one of the largest in our company’s history, is a decisive and very important strategic move in the modernization of our packaging assets,” says Mario Plourde, president and CEO of Cascades. “By adding the Bear Island mill to our platform, more than 60 percent of our containerboard manufacturing capacity will be in the top quartile of the industry. In addition to offering a unique development platform, this plant will strengthen our geographic positioning and presence in the U.S. and will enhance the competitiveness of our asset base and our product offering regardless of economic conditions.

“From an operational standpoint, Bear Island will also optimize the flexibility of our manufacturing platform by providing a product offering that will be complementary to its sister plant Greenpac, located in Niagara Falls,” Plourde adds. “Bear Island will also offer 100-percent-recycled products with light basis weights. Greatly valued by our current and future customers, these eco-responsible products are particularly well suited for e-commerce.”

Charles Malo, president and chief operating officer at Cascades Containerboard Packaging, says the Bear Island mill “will be equipped with the latest technology and will be able to offer one of the lightest and high-end 100-percent-recycled containerboard products on the market.”

Allan Hogg, vice president and chief financial officer at Cascades, adds that the company is “confident” it will reach its targeted leverage ratio by the end of 2023 for financing on this project. During the project development period, the company says it plans to limit capital investment to approximately $200 million annually, excluding the Bear Island project. The project will add about $190 million to this envelope in 2021 and $120 million in 2022.

Closing two tissue plants

Cascades has also announced that it is progressively and permanently closing its tissue production and conversion operations at its plants in Ransom, Pennsylvania, and Pittston, Pennsylvania, between Dec. 7 and Jan. 31, 2021.

According to a news release from Cascades, the two paper machines at the Ransom plant have a total annual production capacity of 50,000 tons of tissue paper. Currently, the conversion of this volume into 6 million cases of product occurs primarily at the Pittston plant. These volumes will be moved to other Cascades plants and filled with additional capacity. The two sites employ a total of 229 workers.

“The aging equipment of these facilities, the low profitability, the high logistic costs and our recently announced investments in other production and converting units in the U.S. have prompted us to move production to our other sites to optimize operational efficiency,” says Jean-David Tardif, president and chief operating officer of Cascades Tissue Group. “The closure of these units is part of our ongoing strategic initiatives to improve the Tissue Group’s profitability. We would like to reassure our customers that Cascades’ service and product quality levels will not be impacted by this decision.”

Cascades reports that the company plans to work to mitigate the impact of this announcement on its employees at its Ransom and Pittston locations by offering them options to transfer to other Cascades’ business units where possible. Tardif adds, “I want to thank every one of our employees at the Ransom and Pittston operations for their loyalty and dedication over the years. I would also like to thank them in advance for their professionalism and commitment to continuing to serve our customers until the closures of the facilities.”

This year, a pilot project was able to successfully ship lithium-ion batteries from Nigeria to Europe for recycling. Closing the Loop, Amsterdam, partners with electronic scrap collection networks in Africa to recycle those materials. For the pilot, Closing the Loop wanted to ship lithium-ion batteries sourced specifically from Nigeria to Europe in a way that was safe.

Closing the Loop released a white paper on the project looking into the opportunity for urban mining for end-of-life cellphone batteries and at how a new circular business model can facilitate this.

“The ability to source materials from old electronics can have immense impacts, including a reduced need for mining materials, particularly conflict minerals,” the white paper states. “The main learnings presented in this paper involve the development of a collection network, incentive creation and collaboration. The results of the pilot project are important for learning the whole industry.”

The white paper reports that the issue of electronic scrap ending up as waste in low- and middle-income countries is becoming a bigger problem. The report says e-scrap generation is growing in those countries with few options for recycling and repair.

Call2Recycle, Atlanta, served as a consultant on this project.

“We shared some of our experiences in the difficulty of moving batteries across borders,” says Carl Smith, president at Call2Recycle. “For years, we’ve had to deal with that issue, not just with lithium-ion batteries but also nickel-cadmium, in moving them to Japan, Korea, France, Canada, etc., with how expensive it is and bureaucratic it is and how it proves to be such an impediment to increasing recycling rates.”

The pilot project started in late 2017, and collection of lithium-ion batteries began in 2018 and ran through April of this year, when the batteries were received by a recycler in Europe. Closing the Loop’s white paper indicates challenges in the pilot project:

• collecting enough batteries for a reasonable pilot;
• the danger of storing and shipping lithium-ion batteries across borders;
• following Basel Convention notification procedures with the lithium-ion batteries; and
• the expenses associated with safely shipping lithium-ion batteries across borders.

Closing the Loop says it was successful in its pilot project. Through the project, 5,000 kilograms (or about 11,000 pounds) of batteries were sourced and shipped from Nigeria to the port of Antwerp, Belgium. Those batteries are estimated to contain at least 1,250 kilograms (or about 2,750 pounds) of cobalt. Closing the Loop reports that the batteries were received by a recycler to be recycled back into materials that will be used for new batteries eventually. Additionally, the project involved the informal sector in Nigeria in the collection process, leading to more income generation for the local community.

Closing the Loop adds that three of its customers were eager to be involved in the pilot project and contributed to covering the costs associated with it. However, the required administration and documentation for shipments related to this pilot project were costly and complicated, and Closing the Loop says that was one obstacle for the pilot.

“Globally, our hope is that [this pilot project] might bring some recognition to some of the regulatory obstacles to achieving battery recycling,” Smith of Call2Recycle says, adding that “uniform mechanisms” are needed to receive and process information to expedite the movement of batteries. “Every place in the world needs their own sufficient processor to achieve any kind of recycling rate. Hopefully, in terms of the Basel Convention, it will lead to improvements as far as the management of this waste.”

The Seattle-based Basel Action Network (BAN) has targeted the problem of unsafe and environmental unsound electronics practices throughout this century. The group has focused in particular on the shipment of obsolete electronics from the developed world to the developing world, at times finding places where unsafe dismantling and disposal methods occur.

Subsequently, the recycling industry has put in place audit-dependent certification systems designed to adhere to laws put in place by governments to pinch the flow of electronic scrap to overseas buyers with unsound practices (or inadequate waste handling infrastructure).

Robin Ingenthron of Vermont-based Good Point Recycling says he understands BAN’s focus on the issue, if not necessarily its use of GPS trackers to look for noncompliant behavior. (Ingenthron’s company was implicated by one such tracking device that ended up in Hong Kong in 2019.)

In its Oct. 7 news release, BAN says the products it tracked consisted of four nonworking LCD monitors that made their way to Guatemala via a textiles exporter. The devices were donated to the Dell/Goodwill partnership known as Dell Reconnect. BAN says this also marks the third time it has found the Dell/Goodwill Reconnect program exporting e-waste "in likely violation of the importing country's laws and Dell's own corporate policy."

Although not necessarily defending parties in that transaction, Ingenthron’s complaint has more to do with phrasing used by BAN in its news releases that, in his view, create false impressions that often go unquestioned by media outlets running the news releases.

In a blog post, Ingenthron questions BAN’s use of the word “waste” to describe refurbished or refurbishable equipment, and the word “likely” to describe whether shipments of such materials to developing nations entail a legal violation.

Ingenthron writes that the terms “’used goods’ and ‘waste’ are defined separately in international law, and that the key to guilt is intent. Otherwise, every brand new item that landed overseas - if it failed under warranty, or was damaged in shipping - would be a violation of international law.”

He continues, “BAN has, for two decades, tried to erase the fact that the most knowledgeable actors, the ones most in control of the trade, the purchasers least likely to waste money, are the overseas buyers. They do not pay to ship ‘waste’ with the intent to avoid costs they would certainly not incur, in the rich nations where they purchase surplus goods.”

Ingenthron says BAN uses select phrasing “to define what hard-working poor people are attempting to purchase as ‘waste’ and as ‘likely’ illegal, implying that intent to purchase for reuse does not matter; that even if BAN is responsible for the device being nonworking [and] nonrepairable, that the traders were engaged in criminality.”

BAN concludes its Oct. 7 news release by stating, “BAN continues to use GPS trackers on a regular basis to ensure downstream due diligence of e-waste movements and makes use of them as a verification tool in their own ethical Electronics Recycling Certification—e-Stewards.”

Jim Puckett, executive director of BAN, shared his comments on the monitor shipments to Guatemala with Recycling Today via email, writing: “It is time to cease using the developing world as garbage and broken equipment collectors for the rich industrialized countries. This results in the export of harm and the ultimate diffusion of precious resources. This has been [the] conclusion not only of the environmental community, 188 governments and hundreds of ITAD (information technology asset disposition) leaders globally (e.g. the Coalition of American Electronics Recyclers (CAER), but it is the conclusion of Dell and Goodwill as well. Our concern is that Dell and Goodwill while talking the talk are not doing all they can to enforce their important policy.”